THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

DAVIS 

GIFT  OF 
FREDERICK  L.  GRIFFIN 


NET: 


BRANN 

THE  ICONOCLAST 

A   COLLECTION 

OF  THE 

WRITINGS  OF  W.  C  BRANN 

IN  TWO  VOLUMES 

WITH  BIOGRAPHY  BY  J.  D.  SHAW 

VOLUME  ONE 


Published  by 

HERZ   BROTHERS 

Waco,  Texas,  U.  S.  A. 
WJ 


TY  OF  CALIFOUMEX 
DAVIS 


COPYRIGHTID,  1898, 

BY 
HERZ     BROTHERS 


ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

WILLIAM  COWPER  BRANN 5 

WOMAN'S  WICKEDNESS 9 

A  FINANCIAL  FETISH 16 

THE  BEAUTEOUS  REBECCA 22 

THE  BUCK  NEGRO 24 

A  VISION  OF  HEAVEN 29 

APOSTLE  vs.  PAGAN 33 

FAITH  AND  FOLLY 37 

THE  AGE  OF  CONSENT 39 

JONAH'S  GOURD 42 

A  CARNIVAL  OF  CRIME 46 

THE  APOSTLE'S  BIOGRAPHY      . 48 

BLUE  AND  GRAY 50 

A  MAID'S  MISTAKE 55 

OPTIMISM  vs.  PESSIMISM 58 

BALAAM'S  Ass 62 

A  TOUCH  OF  HIGH  LIFE 75 

EVOLUTION  OR  REVOLUTION 81 

SPEAKING  OF  GALL        .  87 

INCOME  TAX  DECISION 108 

SANCTIFICATION  AND  THE  SWORD 109 

No  CROSS-EYED  CLERGYMEN 114 

THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE 116 

THE  LOCOMOTIVE  ENGINEER 119 

BRANN  vs.  SLATTERY .  124 

TRILBY  AND  THE  TRILBYITES 138 

THE  AMERICAN  DRUMMER 146 

CASH  vs.  COIN     .-      . 155 

TEXAS  AND  INTOLERANCE 164 

A  DAMNABLE  DECISION     .  170 

A  BIBLICAL  BEAR  STORY 173 

BEAUTY  AND  THE  BEAST 176 

PUGILISM  vs.  HYPOCRISY 184 

ANTONIA  TEIXEIRA 187 

DANCING  TO  THE  DEVIL 192 

THE  A.  P.  A.  IDIOCY 201 

GROVER'S  NEW  GIRL     .       .       .       .    „ 207 

BAYLOR  IN  BAD  BUSINESS 212 

THE  JURY  SYSTEM 216 

POLITICIANS  AND  PENSIONERS 220 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

TRUE  LOVE'S  TRIALS 222 

JINGOES  AND  JOHN  BULL 226 

THE  SINGLE  TAXERS 230 

THE  GRAMMAR  SHARP 244 

HEAVEN  AND  HELL        .        .        .       .......  247 

ISRAEL  As  IT  Is         . 249 

THE  CURSE  OF  KISSING     •  .     •.'.       .       .       .       .       .       .       .  256 

THE  MAN  IN  THE  MOON   .       .       .       .  •     .       .       .       .       .       259 

THE  NEW  WOMAN.     •  .     •- .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .  268 

SLAVE  OR  SOVEREIGN        .       ,       .       .       .       .\    .       .       .       272 

MARLBOROUGH-VANDERBILT  MARRIAGE      .       .     -  .       .       .'      .  292 

HUMBUGS  AND  HUMBUGGERY  . 297 

THE  TEIXEIRA-MORRIS  CASE        .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .  320 

BEANS  AND  BLOOD     .       .       .       .       .       .       ....       325 

THE  REPUBLIC  IN  DANGER  .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .  332 

MARRIAGE  AND  MISERY     .       .       .       •.       .       .       .       .       .       336 

WAR  OR  WIND        ......       .       .       .       .       .       .340 

THE  COMMON  COURTESAN      •  .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       348 

THE  "COUNTESS"  CASTELLANE    .       .       .       .       .       ,       .        .  353 

THE  MORMONS  IN  MEXICO       .       ...       ...       .       356 

POTIPHAR'S  WIFE    .    •  .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .  360 

BRO.  EARLY'S  BAZOO         .       .       .       ...      ..       .       .       371 

GOLD,  SILVER  AND  GAB     •  .       ,       .       .       .       .     '  .       .       .  375 

WOMAN  IN  JOURNALISM     .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       381 

ADAM  AND  EVE       .       ..-...-.       .       .       .       .  383 

THE  LOCAL  OPTION  LUNACY  .          ......       .       388 

OLD  GLORY      .       .       .       ...       ...       :       .       .  398 

OUR  AMERICAN  CZARS       .       .       ...       .       .       .       .       403 

AN  OLD  MAID'S  AUCTION     .    •  .    •   .       .       .       .       .    " .       .  413 

"THE  WEDDING  OF  THE  SEASON"  .        .       .       .       .       .       .       417 

LOVE  As  AN  INTOXICANT     .       .      y       .       .       ....  423 

A  NATIONAL  POEM     .    _   .       .       .       ....       .       i       426 

BRANN  ON  HUMBUGS     .       .       .   /   .    ;  .       .       ....  428 

A  NEW  YORK  SAWCIETY  SHEET      .        .    •   .       .       ...       435 

GODY'S  MAGAZINE  FOR  MOKES     .       .       . r/    .       .       .     :  .       .  438 
DEAN  HART  OF  DENVER  .       .       .    '   .       .       .       ..       .       .       441 

"UNCLE  WILLIAM"  CAMERON      .       .       .      ..       ...       .  445 

THE  SEVENTH  COMMANDMENT  .        . 448 

"Quo  VADIS"  .        .        .        .        .       .     - 457 

WILLY  WALLY  TO  WED  •   .       ....       461 


WILLIAM  COWPER  BRANN 

William  Cowper  Brann  was  born  in  Htimboldt  Township, 
Coles  County,  Illinois,  January  4,  1855.  He  was  not  raised 
in  the  home  of  his  parents,  though  his  father,  Rev.  Noble 
Brann,  survived  him,  and  is  still  living.  His  mother  having 
died  when  he  was  two  and  a  half  years  old,  he  was  within 
the  next  six  months  placed  in  the  care  of  Mr.  William  Haw- 
kins, a  Coles  County  farmer,  with  whom  he  lived  about  ten 
years.  As  to  his  childhood  experiences  on  the  Hawkins' 
farm  nothing  is  now  known.  They  were  probably  such  as 
are  common  to  children  raised  in  the  country.  Of  Mr. 
Hawkins  he  always  spoke  kindly,  referring  to  him  as  "Pa 
Hawkins."  His  nature  was  not  suited  to  farm  life,  however, 
and  he  finally  made  up  his  mind  to  see  more  of  the  world, 
hence  without  ever  having  disclosed  his  resolution  to  any 
one,  he  quietly  walked  away  one  dark  and  cheerless  night, 
carrying  in  a  small  box  under  his  arm  all  that  he  then  pos- 
sessed, and  leaving  behind  him  the  friends  of  his  childhood 
in  the  only  place  he  had  ever  known  as  his  home,  thus  enter- 
ing upon  the  active  struggle  of  life  at  thirteen  years  of  age, 
without  friends,  destitute  of  means,  and  almost  entirely  un- 
educated. 

The  first  position  he  obtained  was  that  of  bell  boy  in  a 
hotel.  Later  on  he  learned  to  be  a  painter  and  grainer,  then 
a  printer,  a  reporter,  and  finally  an  editorial  writer.  He  was 
energetic,  industrious  and  painstaking  in  whatever  he  un- 
dertook to  do,  therefore  always  employed.  Early  in  his 
struggle  he  realized  the  need  of  an  education,  in  the  acquire- 
ment of  which  he  applied  himself  with  eager  diligence.  Na- 
ture had  endowed  him  with  keen  perceptive  powers,  a  reten- 
tive memory  and  great  mental  vigor,  by  means  of  which  he 
soon  accumulated  considerable  knowledge.  Every  moment 
that  could  be  spared  from  his  daily  toil  was  spent  in  reading 


6  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

books  of  science,  philosophy,  history,  biography  and  general 
literature.  In  this  way  he  became  thoroughly  informed  on 
almost  every  important  subject,  as  will  be  seen  by  the  con- 
tents of  this  volume. 

On  March  3.  1877,  at  Rochelle,  Illinois,  he  was  married  to 
Miss.  Carrie  Martin,  who,  with  their  two  children,  Grace 
Gertrude  and  William  Carlyle,  is  now  living  in  the  beautiful 
home,  here  at  Waco,  from  which  he  was  buried  April  3, 
1898. 

During  all  the  years,  from  the  time  he  left  the  hospitable 
home  of  Mr.  Hawkins,  in  1868,  until  after  he  had  success- 
fully launched  "Brann's  Iconoclast,"  he  suffered  the  harass- 
ing annoyances  of  extreme  poverty,  in  the  endurance  of 
which  he  was  cheerful,  hopeful  and  diligent  in  the  equip- 
ment of  his  mind  preparatory  to  the  work  he  always  be- 
lieved he  would  some  day  be  able  to  accomplish. 

Beginning  his  literary  career  as  a  reporter,  he  was  soon 
made  an  editorial  writer,  in  which  capacity  he  became  well- 
known  throughout  Illinois,  Missouri  and  Texas.  As  such 
he  was  versatile,  forceful  and  direct.  There  was  no  needless 
repetition  or  tiresome  circumlocution  in  his  composition. 
He  possessed  an  inexhaustible  vocabulary,  from  which  he 
could  always  find  the  words  best  fitted  to  convey  his  mean- 
ing at  the  moment  they  were  most  needed,  and  every  sen- 
tence was  resplendent  with  an  order  of  wit,  humor  and  satire 
peculiar  to  a  style  original  with  himself. 

In  July,  1891,  he  issued  at  Austin,  Texas,  the  first  number 
of  "Brann's  Iconoclast."  Only  a  few  numbers  appeared, 
when  it  was  suspended  and  he  resumed  his  editorial  work, 
then  on  the  "Globe-Democrat,"  of  St.  Louis,  Missouri,  and 
later  on  the  "Express"  of  San  Antonio,  Texas.  It  was  in 
connection  with  his  first  attempt  to  establish  the  "Icono- 
clast" that  he  delivered  a  few  lectures  that  were  well  re- 
ceived. In  later  years  he  went  upon  the  platform  again 
with  every  prospect  of  a  successful  career  in  the  lecture 
field. 

In  the  summer  of  1894  he  settled  here  in  Waco,  and,  in 
February  of  the  following  year,  revived  the  "Iconoclast," 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  7 

which  was  successful  from  the  first  issue,  having  reached, 
at  the  time  of  his  death,  a  circulation  of  ninety  thousand 
copies.  It  was  through  the  "Iconoclast"  that  his  genius 
found  full  scope  for  development,  and  that  he  became  best 
known  to  the  public.  In  its  columns  he  dared  to  be  himself. 
There  was  now  no  restraint  imposed  upon  him  by  timorous 
publishers.  It  belonged  to  him,  and  in  it  he  gave  full  wing 
to  his  own  thought.  It  was  this  intellectual  freedom,  sus- 
tained by  the  magic  power  and  personality  of  a  real  genius, 
that  gave  to  it  such  widespread  popularity. 

Mr.  Brann  has  been  classed  as  a  humorist.  This  he  was, 
and  of  a  type  peculiar  to  himself,  but  he  was  not  content 
with  merely  having  amused  or  entertained  the  people,  he 
aspired  to  arouse  public  sentiment  in  the  interest  of  certain 
reforms.  He  was  a  hater  of  shams  and  defied  every  form 
of  fraud,  hypocrisy  and  deceit.  He  made  of  his  humor  a 
whip  with  which  to  scourge  from  the  temple  of  social  purity 
every  intruder  there.  He  joined  in  no  partisan  schemes  for 
place  or  power,  but,  confident  of  his  own  ground,  he  would 
stand  alone  in  the  defiance  of  popular  humbugs  and  frauds. 
This  heroic  independence,  while  admired  by  many,  made 
him  a  mark  for  the  envy  and  hatred  of  such  as  feared  him, 
and  in  the  end  proved  to  be  the  cause  of  his  death. 

But  with  all  his  uncompromising  hatred  of  shams,  there 
beat  in  the  bosom  of  W.  C.  Brann  a  warm  and  generous 
heart  for  the  world  at  large,  and  no  man  was  ever  a  more 
devoted  friend  to  the  poor  and  needy.  No  beggar  was  ever 
turned  away  from  his  door  empty  handed,  and  no  worthy 
cause  ever  asked  his  help  in  vain.  His  religion  was  to  do 
whatever  he  believed  to  be  right,  and  to  defy  the  wrong 
even  though  it  should  be  found  parading  in  the  garb  and  liv- 
ery of  righteousness. 

Mr.  Brann  was  fond  of  nature.  He  loved  the  mountains, 
the  lakes,  the  rivers  and  the  billowy  sea.  He  loved  to  walk 
amid  forest  trees  and  watch  the  birds  fly  from  bough  to 
bough  and  warble  their  songs  of  love,  but  in  all  the  wide, 
wide  world,  his  home  life  was  the  most  sacred  object  of  his 
devotion,  and  when  prosperity  gave  him  the  means  to  do  so 


8  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

he  found  great  delight  in  making  it  beautiful  and  pleasant. 
He  was  fond  of  his  friends,  but  the  love  he  bore  his  wife  and 
children  was  sublimely  beautiful,  tender  and  affectionate. 

His  sudden  death  was  a  shock  not  only  to  his  immediate 
friends,  but  to  the  hundreds  of  thousands  who  knew  him 
through  the  "Iconoclast."  Walking  quietly  along  the  street, 
talking  with  a  friend,  the  bullet  of  an  assassin  pierced  his 
body,  entering  through  the  back,  and,  although  he  had  the 
courage,  with  strength  enough,  to  turn  and  fatally  wound 
his  antagonist,  he  lived  but  a  few  hours,  when  all  that  re- 
mained of  one  of  the  most  brilliant  journalists  on  the  Ameri- 
can continent  was  followed  to  Oakwood  Cemetery  by  prob- 
ably the  largest  funeral  procession  ever  witnessed  in  this 
city.  There  he  was  tenderly  laid  to  rest  in  the  embrace  of 
our  common  mother  earth,  and  under  a  mound  of  floral  of- 
ferings, which  though  profuse  and  costly  were  but  a  feeble 
expression  of  the  sincere  grief  that  struck  dumb  with  awe 
the  thousands  upon  thousands  who  had  learned  to  love  him 
with  an  affection  accorded  to  few  men. 

J.  W.  SHAW. 

Waco,  Texas,  Sept,  loth,  1898. 


WOMAN'S  WICKEDNESS. 

By  the  "social  evil"  is  commonly  understood  illicit  inter- 
course of  the  sexes,  a  violation  of  law  or  custom  intended 
to  regulate  the  procreative  passion.  . 

The  "evil"  is  probably  as  old  as  society,  coeval  with  man- 
kind. History — tradition  itself — goes  not  back  to  a  time 
when  statutes,  confessedly  human,  or  professedly  divine, 
were  capable  of  controlling  the  fierce  fires  that  blaze  within 
the  blood — when  all-consuming  Love  was  cold  Reason's 
humble  slave  and  Passion  yielded  blind  obedience  unto  Pre- 
cept. Although  the  heavens  have  been  ever  peopled  with 
threatening  gods  and  the  great  inane  filled  with  gaping 
hells;  although  kings  and  courts  have  thundered  their  inhi- 
bitions forth,  and  society  turned  upon  illicit  love  Medusa's 
awful  frown,  the  Paphian  Venus  has  flourished  in  every 
age  and  clime,  and  still  flaunts  her  scarlet  flag  in  the  face 
of  heaven. 

The  history  of  humanity — its  poetry,  its  romance,  its 
very  religion — is  little  more  than  a  Joseph's  coat,  woven  of 
Love's  celestial  warp  and  Passion's  infernal  woof  in  the 
loom  of  Time.  For  sensuous  Cleopatra's  smiles  Mark 
Antony  thought  the  world  well  lost ;  for  false  Helen's  favors 
proud  Dion's  temples  blazed,  and  the  world  is  strewn  with 
broken  altars  and  ruined  fanes,  with  empty  crowns  and 
crumbling  thrones  blasted  by  the  selfsame  curse. 

In  many  cities  of  every  land  abandoned  women  are  so 
numerous,  despite  all  these  centuries  of  law-making  and 
moralizing,  that  they  find  it  impossible  to  earn  a  livelihood 
by  their  nefarious  trade — are  driven  by  sheer  necessity  to 
seek  more  respectable  employment.  The  supply  of  public 
prostitutes  is  apparently  limited  only  by  the  demand,  while 
the  number  of  "kept  women"  is  constantly  increasing,  and 
society  becoming  day  by  day  more  lenient  to  those  favor- 
ites of  fortune  who  have  indulged  in  little  escapades  not  in 
strict  accord  with  the  Seventh  Commandment.  It  is  now 
a  common  occurrence  for  a  female  member  of  the  "Four 
Hundred"  who  has  confessedly  gone  astray,  to  be  received 
back  on  an  equality  with  her  most  virtuous  sisters.  In 
ancient  Sparta  theft  was  considered  proper,  but  getting 


10  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

caught  a  crime.  Modern  society  has  improved  upon  that 
peculiar  moral  code.  Adultery — if  the  debauchee  have 
wealth — is  but  a  venial  fault,  and  to  be  found  out  a  trifling 
misfortune,  calling  for  condolence  rather  than  condemnation. 
It  is  not  so  much  the  number  of  professed  prostitutes  that 
alarms  the  student  of  sociology,  as  the  brutal  indifference  to 
even  the  semblance  of  sexual  purity  which  is  taking  posses- 
sion of  our  social  aristocracy,  and  which  poison,  percolating 
through  the  underlying  strata,  threatens  to  eliminate  wom- 
anly continence  from  the  world. 

If,  despite  all  our  safeguards  of  law  and  the  restraining 
force  of  religion,  society  becomes  more  hopelessly  corrupt ; 
if,  with  our  advancing  civilization,  courtesans  increase  in 
number;  if,  with  our  boasted  progress  in  education  and  the 
arts,  women  of  alleged  respectability  grow  less  chary  of 
{heir  charms — if  the  necessities  of  poverty  and  the  luxury 
of  wealth  alike  breed  brazen  bawds  and  multiply  cuckolds 
— it  is  a  fair  inference  that  there  is  something  radically 
wrong  with  our  social  system. 

It  might  be  well,  perhaps,  for  priests  and  publicists  to 
cease  launching  foolish  anathemas  and  useless  statutes  at 
prostitution  long  enough  to  inquire  what  is  driving  so 
many  bright  young  women  into  dens  of  infamy, — for  those 
good  souls  who  are  laboriously  striving  to  drag  their  fallen 
sisters  out  of  the  depths,  to  study  the  causes  of  the  disease 
before  attempting  a  cure.  I  say  disease,  for  I  cannot  agree 
with  those  utilitarians  who  profess  to  regard  prostitution 
as  a  "necessary  evil ;"  who  protest  that  the  brute  passions 
of  man  must  be  sated, — that  but  for  the  Scarlet  Woman  he 
would  debauch  the  Vestal  Virgin.  I  do  not  believe  that 
Almighty  God  decreed  that  one-half  the  women  of  this 
world  should  be  sacrificed  upon  the  unclean  altar  of  Lust 
that  the.  others  might  be  saved.  It  is  an  infamous,  a  re- 
volting doctrine,  a  damning  libel  of  the  Diety.  All  the 
.courtesans  beneath  heaven's  blue  concave  never  caused  a 
single  son  of  Adam's  miserv  to  refrain  from  tempting,  so 
far  as  he  possessed  the  power,  one  virtuous  woman. 
Never. 

Governor  Fishback,  of  Arkansas,  recently  declared  that 
"houses  of  ill-fame  are  necessary  to  city  life,"  and  added: 
•"If  you  close  these  sewers  of  men's  animal  passions  you 
overflow  the  home  and  spread  disaster." 

This  theory  has  been  adopted  by  many  municipalities, 
courtesans  duly  licensed,  their  business  legitimatized  and 
accorded  the  protection  of  the  law.  If  houses  of  ill-fame 
be  "necessary  to  city  life;"  if  they  prevent  tne  overflow  of 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  11 

the  home  of  bestial  lust  and  the  spread  of  disaster,  it  fol- 
lows as  a  natural  sequence  that  the  prostitute  is  a  public 
benefactor,  to  be  encouraged  rather  than  condemned,  de- 
serving of  civic  honor  rather  than  social  infamy.  Will 
Governor  Fishback  and  his  fellow  utilitarians  be  kind 
enough  to  make  a  careful  examination  of  the  quasi-respect- 
able element  of  society  and  inform  us  how  large  an  army 
of  courtesans  will  be  necessary  to  enable  it  to  pass  a  baking 
powder  puritv  test? 

Governor  Fishback  does  not  appear  to  have  profited  by 
Pope's  suggestion  that  "The  proper  study  of  mankind  is 
man,"  or  he  would  know  full  well  that  the  presence  in  a 
city  of  prostitutes  but  serves  to  accentuate  the  dangers 
that  environ  pure  womanhood.  He  would  know  that  they 
add  fuel  to  Lust's  unholy  fires,  that  thousands  of  them  are 
procuresses  as  well  as  prostitutes,  and  that  one  bad  woman 
can  do  more  to  corrupt  her  sex  than  can  any  libertine  since 
the  days  of  Sir  Launcelot.  He  would  likewise  know  that 
so  perverse  is  the  nature  of  man  that  he  would  leave  a 
harem  filled  with  desirous  houris  more  beautiful  than  ever 
danced  through  Mohammedan  dream  of  Paradise,  to  dig 
pitfalls  for  the  unwary  feet  of  some  misshapen  country 
wench  who  was  striving  to  lead  an  honest  life.  As  a  muley 
cow  will  turn  from  a  manger  filled  with  new-mown  hay, 
and  wear  out  her  thievish  tongue  trying  to  coax  a  wisp  of 
rotten  straw  through  a  crack  in  a  neighbor's  barn,  so  will 
man  turn  from  consenting  Venus'  matchless  charms  to 
solicit  scornful  Dian. 

What  is  it  that  is  railroading  so  large  a  portion  of  the 
young  women  to  hell?  What  causes  so  many  to  forsake 
the  ''straight  and  narrow  path"  that  is  supposed  to  lead  to 
everlasting  life,  and  seek  the  irremediable  way  of  eternal 
death?  What  mad  phantasy  is  it  that  leads  so  many  wives 
to  sacrifice  the  honor  of  their  husbands  and  shame  their  chil- 
dren? Is  it  evil  inherent  in  the  daughters  of  Eve  them- 
selves? Is  it  lawless  lust  or  force  of  circumstances  that 
adds  legion  after  legion  to  the  cohorts  of  shame?  Or  has 
our  boasted  progress  brought  with  it  a  suspicion  that 
female  chastity  is,  after  all,  an  overprized  bauble — that 
what  is  no  crime  against  nature  should  be  tolerated  by  this 
eminently  practical  age?  We  have  cast  behind  us  the 
myths  and  miracles,  proven  the  absurdity  of  our  ancestors' 
most  cherished  traditions  and  brought  their  idols  beneath 
the  iconoclastic  hammer.  In  this  general  social  and  intel- 
lectual house-cleaning  have  we  consigned  virtue  to  the 
rubbish  heap — or  at  best  relegated  it  to  the  garret  with 


12  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

the  spinning-wheel,  hand-loom  and  other  out  of  date 
trumpery?  Time  was  when  a  woman  branded  as  a  bawd 
hid  her  face  for  shame,  or  consorted  only  with  her  kind; 
now,  if  she  can  but  become  sufficiently  notorious  she  goes 
upon  the  stage,  and  men  take  their  wives  and  daughters  to 
see  her  play  "Camille"  and  kindred  characters.  This  may 
signify  much;  among  other  things  that  the  courtesan  is 
creeping  into  social  favor — even  that  a  new  code  of  morals 
'is  now  abuilding,  in  which  she  will  be  the  grand  exemplar. 
As  change  is  the  order  of  the  day,  and  what  one  age  damns 
its  successor  ofttimes  deifies,  who  knows  but  an  up-to-date 
religion  may  yet  be  evolved  with  Bacchic  revels  for  sacred 
rites  and  a  favorite  prostitute  for  high  priestess? 

Were  I  called  upon  to  diagnose  the  social  disease;  did 
any  duly  ordained  committee — from  the  numerous  "Re- 
form" societies,  Ministerial  Associations,  secular  legisla- 
tures or  other  bodies  that  are  taking  unto  themselves  great 
credit  for  assiduously  making  a  bad  matter  worse — call 
upon  me  for  advice  anent  the  proper  method  of  restoring 
to  healthy  life  the  world's  moribund  morality,  I  would 
probably  shock  the  souls  out  of  them  by  stating  a  few  plain 
facts  without  troubling  myself  to  provide  polite  trimmings. 

You  cannot  reform  society  from  the  bottom;  you  must 
begin  at  the  top. 

Man,  physically  considered,  is  merely  an  a.nimal,  and  the 
law  of  his  life  is  identical  with  that  of  the  brute  creation. 
Continence  in  man  or  woman  is  a  violation  of  nature's 
edicts,  a  sacrifice  made  by  the  individual  to  the  necessities 
of  civilization. 

Like  the  beast  of  the  field,  man  formerly  took  unto  him- 
self a  mate,  and  with  his  rude  strength  defended  her  from 
the  advances  of  other  males.  Such,  reduced  to  the  last 
analysis,  is  the  basis  of  marriage,  of  female  chastity  and 
family  honor.  Rape  and  adultery  were  prohibited  under 
pains  and  penalties,  and  behind  the  sword  of  the  criminal 
law  grew  up  the  moral  code.  As  wealth  increased  man 
multiplied  his  wives  and  added  concubines ;  but  woman 
was  taught  that  while  polygamy  was  pleasing  to  the  gods 
polyandry  was  the  reverse— that  while  the  husband  was 
privileged  to  seek  sexual  pleasure  in  a  foreign  bed,  the 
wife  who  looked  with  desiring  eyes  upon  other  than  her 
rightful  lord  merited  the  scorn  of  earth  and  provoked  the 
wrath  of  heaven. 

For  long  ages  woman  was  but  the  creature  of  man's 
caprice,  the  drudge  or  ornament  of  his  home,  mistress  of 
neither  her  body  nor  her  mind.  But  as  the  world  advanced 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  13 

and  matter  was  made  more  subject  unto  mind — as  divine 
Reason  wrested  the  sceptre  from  brute  Force — woman 
began  to  assume  her  proper  place  in  the  world's  economy. 
She  is  stepping  forth  into  the  garish  light  of  freedom,  is 
realizing  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the  human  race 
that  she  is  a  moral  entity — that  even  she,  and  not  another, 
is  the  arbiter  of  her  fate.  And,  as  ever  before,  new-found 
freedom  is  manifesting  itself  in  criminal  folly — liberty  has 
become  a  synonym  for  license. 

The  "progressive"  woman — the  woman  who  is  not  only 
well  "up-to-date,"  but  skirmishing  with  the  future — is  ask- 
ing her  brother:  "If  thou,  why  not  I?  If  man  is  forgiven 
a  score  of  mistresses  must  woman,  blessed  with  like  reason 
and  cursed  with  kindred  passions,  be  damned  for  one 
lover?"  And  while  the  question  grates  upon  her  ear,  the 
answer  comes  not  trippingly  to  the  tongue.  I  do  not  mean 
that  all  women  who  imagine  themselves  progressive  are 
eager  to  assume  the  same  easy  morals  that  from  time  imme- 
morial have  characterized  the  sterner  sex;  but  this  line  of 
argument,  peculiar  to  their  class,  while  not  likely  to  make 
men  better,  is  well  calculated  to  make  foolish  women  worse. 
The  sooner  they  realize  that  he-Dians  are  scarce  in  the 
country  as  brains  in  the  head  of  a  chrysanthemum  dude; 
that  such  sexual  purity  as  the  world  is  to  be  blessed  withal 
must  be  furnished  by  the  softer  sex,  the  better  for  all  con- 
cerned. That  they  will  eventually  cease  their  altogether 
useless  clamor  that  bearded  men  become  as  modest  as 
blushing  maids,  and  agree  with  the  poet  that  "Whatever  is, 
is  right,"  the  lessons  of  history  bid  us  hope.  When  the 
French  people  threw  off  the  yoke  of  the  royalist  and  aris- 
tocrat they  likewise  loudly  clamored  for  equality,  fraternity 
and  other  apparently  reasonable  but  utterly  impossible 
things,  until  the  bitter  school  of  experience  taught  them 
better.  The  progressive  women  have  not  yet  set  up  la  Belle 
Guillotine — in  Washington  or  elsewhere — for  the  decapita- 
tion of  male  incorrigibles ;  which  significant  fact  confirms 
our  old  faith  that  the  ladies  rather  like  a  man  who  would  not 
deliberately  overdo  the  part  of  Joseph. 

But  the  female  "reformer,"  with  her  social  board  of 
equalization  theories,  is  but  a  small  factor  in  that  mighty 
force  which  is  filling  the  land  with  unfaithful  wives  and  the 
potter's  field  with  degraded  prostitutes. 

When  the  people  of  a  nation  are  almost  universally  poor, 
sexual  purity  is  the  general  rule.  Simple  living  and  severe 
toil  keep  in  check  the  passions  and  make  it  possible  to 
mould  the  mind  with  moral  precepts.  But  when  a  nation 


14  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

becomes  divided  into  the  very  rich  and  the  extremely  poor; 
when  wilful  Waste  and  woful  Want  go  hand  in  hand; 
when  luxury  renders  abnormal  the  passions  of  the  one; 
and  cupidity,  born  of  envy,  blunts  the  moral  perceptions  of 
the  other,  then  indeed  is  that  nation  delivered  over  to  the 
world,  the  flesh  and  the  devil.  When  all  alike  are  poor, 
contentment  reigns.  The  son  grows  up  a  useful,  self- 
reliant  man,  the  daughter  an  industrious  virtuous  woman. 
From  this  class  comes  nearly  every  benefactor  of  mankind. 
It  has  ever  been  the  great  repository  of  morality,  the  bal- 
ance-wheel of  society,  the  brain  and  brawn  of  the  majestic 
world.  Divided  into  millionaires  and  mendicants,  the  poor 
man's  son  becomes  feverish  to  make  a  showy  fortune  by 
fair  means  or  by  foul,  while  his  daughter  looks  with  en- 
vious eye  upon  m'lady,  follows  her  fashions  and  too  often 
apes  her  morals.  The  real  life  is  supplanted  by  the  artifi- 
cial, and  people  are  judged,  not  by  what  thev  are,  but  by 
what  they  have.  The  ''true-love  match"  becomes  but  a 
reminiscence — the  blind  god's  bow  is  manipulated  by 
brutish  Mammon.  Men  and  women  make  "marriages  of 
convenience,"  consult  their  fortunes  rather  than  their  affec- 
tions— seek  first  a  lawful  companion  with  a  well-filled  purse, 
and  then  a  congenial  paramour. 

The  working  girl  soon  learns  that  beyond  a  few  stale 
platitudes — fired  off  much  as  a  hungry  man  says  grace 
— she  gets  no  more  credit  for  wearing  honest  rags  than 
flaunting  dishonest  silks;  that  good  name,  however  pre- 
cious it  may  be  to  her,  is  really  going  out  of  fashion — that 
when  the  world  pretends  to  prize  it  above  rubies  it  is  lying 
— is  indulging  in  the  luxury  of  hypocrisy.  She  likewise 
learns  that  the  young  men  really  worth  marrying,  knowing 
that  a  family  means  a  continual  striving  to  be  fully  as  fash- 
ionable and  artificial  as  those  better  able  to  play  the  fool, 
seek  mistresses  rather  than  wives.  She  becomes  discour- 
aged, desperate,  and  drifts  into  the  vortex. 

Much  is  said  by  self-constituted  reformers  of  the  lach- 
rymose school  anent  trusting  maids  "betrayed"  by  base- 
hearted  scoundrels,  and  loving  wives  led  astray  by  de- 
signing villains ;  but  I  could  never  work  my  sympathies  up 
to  the  slopping  over  stage  for  these  pathetic  victims  of 
man's  perfidy.  It  may  be  that  my  tear-gflands  lack  a  hair- 
trigger  attachment,  and  my  sob-machine  is  not  of  the  most 
approved  pattern.  Perchance  woman  is  fully  as  big  a  fool 
as  these  reformers  paint  her — that  she  has  no  better  sense 
than  a  blind  horse  that  has  been  taught  to  yield  a  ready 
obedience  to  any  master — to  submit  itself  without  question 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  15 

to  the  guidance  of  any  hand.  Will  the  "progressive"  wo- 
man— who  is  just  now  busy  boycotting  Col.  Breckinridge 
and  spilling  her  salt  tears  over  his  discarded  drab — kindly 
take  a  day  off  and  tell  us  what  is  to  become  of  this  glorious 
country  when  such  incorrigible  she-idiots  get  control  of  it? 
It  is  well  enough  to  protect  the  honor  of  children  with 
severe  laws  and  a  double-shotted  gun;  but  the  average 
young  woman  is  amply  able  to  guard  her  virtue  if  she 
really  values  it,  while  the  married  woman  who  becomes  so 
intimate  with  a  male  friend  that  he  dares  assail  her  con- 
tinence, deserves  no  sympathy.  She  is  the  tempter,  not 
the  victim.  True  it  is  that  maids,  and  matrons  too,  as  pure 
as  the  white  rose  that  blooms  above  the  green  glacier,  have 
been  swept  too  far  by  the  fierce  whirlwind  of  love  and  pas- 
sion; but  of  these  the  world  doth  seldom  hear.  The  wo- 
man whose  sin  is  sanctified  by  love — who  staked  her  name 
and  fame  upon  a  cowardly  lie  masquerading  in  the  garb 
of  eternal  truth — never  yet  rushed  into  court  with  her  tale 
of  woe  or  aired  her  grievance  in  the  public  prints.  The 
world  thenceforth  can  give  but  one  thing  she  wants,  and 
that's  an  unmarked  grave.  May  God  in  his  mercy  shield 
all  such  from  the  parrot  criticisms  and  brutal  insults  of  the 
fish-blooded,  pharisaical  female,  whose  heart  never  thrilled 
to  love's  wild  melody,  yet  who  marries  for  money — puts 
her  frozen  charms  up  at  auction  for  the  highest  bidder,  and 
having  obtained  a  fair  price  by  false  pretenses,  imagines 
herself  pre-eminently  respectable !  In  the  name  of  all  the 
gods  at  once,  which  is  the  fouler  crime,  the  greater  "social 
evil :"  For  a  woman  to  deliberately  barter  her  person  for 
gold  and  lands,  for  gew-gaws,  social  position  and  a  pre- 
ferred pew  in  a  fashionable  church — even  though  the  sale 
be  in  accordance  with  law,  have  the  benediction  of  a  stupid 
priest  and  the  sanction  of  a  corrupt  and  canting  world — or, 
in  defiance  of  custom  and  forgetful  of  cold  precept,  to  cast 
the  priceless  jewel  of  a  woman's  honor  upon  the  altar  of 
illicit  love? 

Give  the  latter  woman  a  chance,  forget  her  fault,  and 
she  will  become  a  blessing  to  society,  an  ornament  to 
heaven;  the  former  is  fit  inhabitant  only  for  a  hell  of  ice. 
She  has  deliberately  dishonored  herself,  her  sex  and  the 
man  whose  name  she  bears,  and  Custom  can  no  more  ab- 
solve her  than  the  pope  can  pardon  sin.  She  is  the  most 
dreadful  product  of  the  "Social  Evil,"  of  unhallowed  sex- 
ual commerce — is  the  child  of  Mammon  and  Medusa,  the 
blue-ribbon  abortion  of  this  monster-bearing  age. 


16  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

A  FINANIAL  FETICH. 
CLEVELAND  AND  THE  CURRENCY. 

The  gold  reserve  is  at  present  making  life  a  burden  to 
the  powers  that  be.  No  African  tribe  deprived  of  its 
stuffed  snake,  or  maid  forlorn  despoiled  of  her  virginity, 
ever  rilled  the  circumambient  ether  with  clamor  more  dol- 
orous than  that  with  which  the  Cleveland  administration  is 
rending  heaven's  imperial  concave  because  its  blessed  finan- 
cial fetich  is  endangered.  Its  doleful  jeremiads  mount 
heavenward  night  and  day,  while  its  piteous  appeals  to 
Congress  to  come  to  the  rescue  of  its  god  of  gold  and  thereby 
save  the  country  from  its  impending  doom,  are  sufficient  to 
melt  a  heart  of  adamant.  The  round  earth  reels  beneath  its 
burden  of  agony  and  the  tom-tom  wildly  beats  to  frighten 
from  its  sacrilegious  feast  the  omnivorous  demon  that  is 
devouring  the  great  monetary  <noon  which  regulates  the 
commercial  tides — and  sometimes  afflicts  with  lunar  mad- 
ness those  politicians  who  repose  beneath  its  horizontal 
rays.  Perhaps  ere  these  mournful  lines  are  committed  to 
cold  type  by  the  deft  fingers  of  a  fair  compositor  the  dread- 
ful danger  will  have  passed,  and  Cleveland's  wild  alarums 
and  Carlisle's  sad  lament  disturb  our  dreams  no  more. 
Perhaps  even  a  Democratic  Congress  can  be  prevailed  upon 
to  come  to  the  rescue  of  its  imperilled  country,  and  thereby 
relieve  the  agonized  President  of  the  awful  alternative  of 
letting  it  go  to  Hades,  or  appealing  to  his  political  foes  for 
saving  grace — throwing  the  Goddess  of  Liberty  into  the 
arms  of  Reed,  who  is  supposed  to  have  played  Sextus  Tar- 
quinus  to  the  old  dame's  Lucrece. 

The  Cleveland  administration  has  already  increased  the 
nation's  interest-bearing  debt  $100,000,000  to  galvanize 
the  moribund  Gold  Reserve,  and  now  admits  that  it  might 
as  well  have  poured  a  Houston  Post  editorial  into  a  sieve, 
or  stored  its  watermelon  crop  in  the  vicinity  of  a  nigger 
camp-meeting.  Perhaps  in  the  fullness  of  time  the  idea 
will  worm  itself  even  into  the  President's  nice  fat  head  that 
when  a  brick  block  can  be  built  on  the  point  of  a  ten-penny 
nail,  $100,000,000  of  gold  will  form  a  sufficient  "basis"  for 
a  two-billion  dollar  currency — that  the  Gold  Reserve  "pro- 
tects the  credit  of  our  circulating  media"  much  as  a  rabbit's 
foot  wards  off  headless  hobgoblins,  or  compels  the  reluct- 
ant smiles  of  Fortune. 

Think  of  $100,000,000  of  gold  going  "security"  for  more 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  17 

than  $1,600,000,000  of  paper  and  silver;  that  were  a  "16  to 
i"  ratio  worth  considering!  There  is  not  $600,000,000  of 
gold  coin  in  the  entire  country;  yet  we  are  expected  to 
believe  a  paper  dollar  isn't  worth  a  whoop  in  Hades  unless 
"backed  by  the  yellow  metal," — that  but  for  the  "guar- 
antee" of  gold,  silver  would  be  discredited  and  lie  down  in 
the  middle  of  the  road.  Think  of  a  bank  with  but  $1,000 
in  ready  cash,  and  whose  entire  assets  amount  to  less  than 
$6,000  enjoying  the  entire  confidence  of  an  intelligent  com- 
munity that  has  more  than  $16,600  on  deposit!  Yet  that 
is  the  position  of  Uncle  Sam  to-day  if  gold  be.  in  very 
truth,  "the  basis  of  our  currency."  Turn  Cheops  upside 
down  and  you  get  a  fair  idea  of  the  present  monetary  situa- 
tion as  seen  by  those  financiers  whom  God  in  his  inscru- 
table wisdom  has  suffered  to  take  charge  of  our  affairs. 

Suppose  the  theory  of  Cleveland  and  Carlisle  be  correct 
— that  the  Gold  Reserve  is  really  the  bulwark  of  our  cur- 
rency, and  that  should  it  be  exhausted  we  would  plunge  to 
the  dreaded  "silver  basis"  like  Lucifer  hurled  headlong  out 
of  heaven,  and  all  our  cartwheel  and  paper  currency  lose 
half  its  purchasing  power :  Who,  then,  is  most  interested  in 
maintaining  it  unimpaired?  Is  it  not  the  capitalistic,  the 
creditor  class — the  very  men  who  are  assiduously  assault- 
ing it  and  who  have  twice  "forced"  the  administration  to 
issue  bonds  to  replenish  it?  If  the  purchasing  power  of 
the  dollar  be  reduced  one-half,  the  debtor  is  not  damaged, 
but  the  creditor  is  despoiled.  The  price  of  the  farmer's 
products  and  the  wage  of  labor  quickly  adjust  themselves 
to  the  new  conditions ;  but  the  man  who  has  -money  loaned, 
or  corded  up  awaiting  investment,  finds  half  of  it  turned  to 
ashes  and  has  absolutely  no  recourse.  If  the  Reserve  be  of 
so  much  importance  to  the  capitalist  why  is  he  constantly 
encroaching  upon  it — even  locking  up  gold  lest  the  govern- 
ment get  hold  of  it,  and  with  it  ward  off  his  impending 
ruin?  If  the  financial  Samsons  insist  on  pulling  the  mon- 
etary temple  down  about  their  ears  why  should  Messrs. 
Cleveland  and  Carlisle  tearfully  appeal  to  Congress  to  head 
'em  off?  Why  should  we  poor  but  honest  Democrats  who 
are  struggling — and  not  always  successfully — to  discharge 
our  debts,  be  expected  to  sit  up  o'nights  and  lament  because 
our  creditors  insist  on  forgiving  half  our  obligations?  Why 
bribe  the  capitalist  with  interest-bearing  bonds  to  refrain 
from  hoisting  himself  with  his  own  petard.  Let  the 
damphool  but  kerosene  his  coat-tails  and  apply  a  match  be- 
fore ascending,  and  he  will  make  a  very  respectable  sky- 
rocket. 


18  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

Does  not  every  man  with  sufficient  intelligence  to  avoid 
standing  under  a  waterspout  like  an  inept  gosling  till  he 
drowns,  know  that  if  the  Gold  Reserve  were  really  neces- 
sary to  the  credit  of  our  currency,  capitalists  would  no 
more  make  war  upon  it  than  they  would  scratch  a  match  in 
a  powder  house  or  gaily  bestride  a  buzz-saw  making  a 
million  revolutions  a  minute?  Cannot  even  the  most  ir- 
remediable monetary  mutton-head  understand  that  if  the 
integrity  of  our  circulating  media  depended  on  the  preserv- 
ation of  the  Gold  Reserve,  Carlisle  could  gather  into  the 
treasury  half  the  yellow  coin  of  the  country  in  a  single 
week  without  issuing  a  single  interest-bearing  bond — that 
it  would  be  forced  upon  him  whenever  there  was  the  slight- 
est suspicion  that  "the  basis  of  our  currency"  was  in  dan- 
ger? Cannot  Secretary  Carlisle  himself  understand  that  if 
his  theory  be  correct  Wall  Street  would  even  now  Be  eager 
to  exchange  gold  for  paper  instead  of  vice  versa — would 
lend  to  the  government  without  interest  all  the  gold  it  could 
scrape  together? 

The  very  fact  that  it  is  possible  for  a  few  men  to  exhaust 
the  Gold  Reserve  in  a  single  day  proves  conclusively  that 
it  is  not  and  cannot  possibly  be  the  "basis"  of  our  cur- 
rency's credit — that  it  is  a  ridiculous  as  well  as  an  expensive 
nuisance.  A  security  that  may  be  destroyed  any  day,  and 
which  is  at  all  times  notoriously  insufficient,  is  utterly  use- 
less so  far  as  establishing  confidence  is  concerned.  If  the 
government  had  possession  of  every  gold  coin  in  the  coun- 
try it  could  redeem  but  little  more  than  one-half  the  out- 
standing paper  currency.  The  people  know  full  well  that 
should  they  become  fearful  of  their  paper  money  and  de- 
mand gold  for  it  they  could  not  get  it,  to-day,  to-morrow  or 
next  year — that  to  redeem  it  dollar  for  dollar  is  a  physical 
impossibility.  Isn't  that  a  fine  "basis  of  credit?"  And  yet 
nobody  appears  to  be  seriously  alarmed  except  the  Cleve- 
land administration,  a  few  "cuckoo"  newspapers — and 
those  capitalists  who  bought  the  $100,000,000  worth  of 
bonds ! 

The  bulk  of  our  currency  consists  of  irredeemable  paper 
—irredeemable  because  it  exceeds  all  the  gold  and  silver 
coin  in  the  country!  And  yet  it  is  accepted  even  more 
readily  than  gold  itself — is  "money  current  with  the  mer- 
chant" in  every  State  of  the  American  Union. 

If  all  the  gold  and  silver  mined  and  minted  since  the 
days  of  King  Solomon  were  sunk  beneath  the  waters  of  the 
sea,  our  paper  currency  would  continue  to  circulate  and  en- 
joy the  same  respect  that  it  does  to-day.  Why?  Because 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  19 

it  serves  the  purpose  for  which  it  was  created;  because 
commerce  does  not  care  whether  it  will  exchange  for  any 
other  kind  of  money  or  not  so  long  as  it  will  expeditiously 
effect  the  exchange  of  pork  and  potatoes,  soap  and  sad- 
irons ;  because  it  constitutes  a  claim  on  the  entire  wealth 
of  this  mighty  Yankee  nation — a  lien  upon  every  bale  of 
cotton  and  bushel  of  corn,  a  claim  upon  every  waving 
wheat-field  and  ounce  of  ore — a  mortgage  on  every  acre  of 
sunny  soil  upon  which  falls  the  shadow  of  our  flag. 

What  a  man  wants  to  know  is  that  he  can  purchase  with 
the  dollar  as  much  of  the  world's  wealth  as  he  gives  there- 
for. Assured  of  that,  he  slips  it  into  his  jeans  and  goes  on 
his  way  rejoicing.  But,  it  will  be  asked  what  imparts  this 
virtue  to  a  piece  of  paper?  We  have  already  shown  that 
it  is  not  the  Gold  Reserve  that  does  it — that  a  bank  whose 
liabilities  are  known  to  be  double  its  total  assets  cannot 
possibly  command  public  confidence.  If  the  creditors  of  a 
concern  should  demand  their  money  it  would  be  compelled 
to  close  its  doors — and  the  very  day  that  our  paper  cur- 
rency is  discredited  by  commerce  that  day  redemption  will 
cease. 

Upon  what  is  confidence  in  our  currency  grounded  if  not 
on  gold?  Upon  confidence  in  the  stability  of  the  American 
Government,  upon  experience,  credit,  necessity!  Upon  oc- 
ular demonstration  that  it  is  an  efficient  exchange  medium, 
an  effective  tool  of  trade. 

The  fear  that  our  paper  currency  will  depreciate  in  pur- 
chasing power  if  not  redeemed  in  gold  on  demand  can  exist 
only  in  the  minds  of  those  who  are  ignorant  both  of  the  les- 
sons of  history  and  the  maxims  of  the  foremost  financiers 
of  the  last  two  centuries.  The  currency  of  a  country,  no 
matter  of  what  it  be  made,  only  depreciates  in  purchasing 
power  when  there  is  more  money  than  business,  more 
trade-tools  than  trade — when  the  supply  of  the  exchange 
media  exceeds  the  demand.  Expansion  of  the  currency  re- 
duces, contraction  increases  the  purchasing  power  of  the 
dollar,  whether  it  be  made  of  paper  or  metal — just  as  the 
scarcity  of  labor  raises  the  wage-rate  and  a  surplus  reduces 
it.  Eliminate  all  our  gold  and  silver  coin,  leaving  to  do  the 
money-work  of  the  country  only  the  paper  currency  now 
extant,  and  instead  of  destroying  its  credit  you  enhance  its 
value.  The  money-work  must  be  done;  if  not  by  one 
agent,  then  by  another. 

But  this  line  of  reasoning — or  rather  these  statements  of 
fact — do  not  necessarily  lead  into  the  "Greenback"  camp. 
It  is  one  thing  to  point  out  that  the  credit  of  our  paper 


20  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

trade-tool  is  not  dependent  upon  the  precious  metals,  and 
quite  another  to  conclude  from  this  premise  that  it  were  ad- 
visable to  entrust  the  currency  of  the  country  to  a  paper- 
mill,  a  job-press  and  an  omnium  gatherum  of  political  odds 
and  ends  who  draw  their  financial  inspiration  from  the 
Forks-of-the-creek.  The  man  who  imagines  that  adding 
to  our  exchange  media  necessarily  increases  our  wealth 
would  double  the  grocer's  stock  by  multiplying  his  gallon 
measures. 

As  the  volume  of  currency  dominates  the  standard  of 
value,  the  most  important  of  all  our  multifarious  tools  of 
trade,  it  should  be  controlled  by  commerce  instead  of  by  a 
partisan  Congress.  And  such  is,  to  a  great  extent,  the  case 
to-day.  Not  to  exceed  6  per  cent,  of  the  exchange  media 
employed  by  the  commerce  of  this  country  bears  the  gov- 
ernment stamp,  and  the  amount  is  steadily  decreasing. 
Commerce  has  practically  taken  the  "Money  Question"  out 
of  the  hands  of  the  politicians.  While  partisan  polemics 
have  perorated,  and  political  conventions  resoluted;  while 
able  editors  have  poured  forth  columns  of  foolish  advice 
and  obfuscated  Presidents  looked  into  leather  spectacles 
and  sagely  shook  their  heads ;  while  the  gold  age  and  the 
silver  age  have  struggled  for  their  innings  and  the  "wild- 
cat" and  "red  dog"  have  plaintively  meowed  or  assiduously 
bayed  the  moon,  commerce  has  quietly  cut  the  Gordian  knot 
— has  provided  itself,  without  the  adventitious  aid  of  the  pol- 
itico-economic "reformer,"  with  that  great  desideratum  of 
industry,  a  flexible  exchange  medium  which  automatically 
adjusts  itself  to  the  requirements  of  trade.  The  develop- 
ment of  our  banking  business,  of  our  system  of  credits — of 
what  has  been  not  inaptly  termed  a  "deposit  currency" — 
renders  it  possible  to  transact  nearly  the  entire  business  of 
the  country  without  the  use  of  actual  money.  Nearly  95 
per  cent,  of  all  exchanges  of  goods  are  effected  to-day  with- 
out the  shifting  of  a  single  dollar.  Except  in  trifling  trans- 
actions money  is  now  used,  not  as  a  medium  of  exchange, 
but  only  as  a  measure  of  value.  And  it  is  worthy  of  remark 
that  all  our  monetary  troubles  are  caused  by  the  5  or  6  per 
cent,  of  political  money  we  still  employ. 

Mr.  Cleveland  imagines  that  he  is  confronted  with  a 
frightful  condition,  when  he  is  only  harassed  by  a  foolish 
theory.  He  has  not  kept  pace  with  the  progress  of  mone- 
tary science — is  pounding  along  in  the  dust  far  in  the  rear 
and  imploring  the  procession  to  chase  itself  and  catch  up. 
We  transformed  the  metal  dollar  into  paper,  and  supposed 
it  to  represent  so  much  coin — that  did  not  exist.  We  just 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  21 

imagined  it  a  dollar,  and  that,  by  some  thaumaturgic  feat  or 
alchemistic  process,  the  government  might  give  us  for  it  the 
gold  it  did  not  have  and  which  we  did  not  want,  and  found 
it  served  as  well  as  tho'  it  weighed  a  pound — as  tho'  re- 
demption were  easy  at  any  time  instead  of  impossible  at  all 
times.  Then  we  went  further,  and  instead  of  a  dollar 
"based  on  (non-extant)  coin/'  we  imagined  a  dollar  without 
even  a  green-coated  paper  ghost,  and  "based,"  not  upon  sup- 
posititious gold,  but  on  commercial  credit.  And  it,  too, 
worked  well — is,  in  fact,  doing  nearly  all  our  monetary  work, 
to-day,  and  doing  it  better  and  cheaper  than  metal  ever  did. 

And  yet  President  Cleveland  professes  to  believe  that  if  he 
once  permits  that  Gold  Reserve  to  get  away,  a  people  pos- 
sessing such  a  monetary  imagination  would  be  unable  to 
exchange  a  keg  of  sauer-kraut  for  a  calico  shirt,  a  mugwump 
vote  for  a  mixed- drink  jag.  He  doesn't  understand  the 
capabilities  of  this  country.  Why,  if  worst  came  to  worst, 
we  could  imagine  that  on  Mars  or  the  Moon  there  was 
located  so  much  gold,  and  with  that  as  "basis"  for  a  paper 
currency,  continue  in  business  at  the  old  stand — continue  to 
exchange  commodities.  And  we  would  have  the  sweet  satis- 
faction of  knowing  that  our  Gold  Reserve  was  safe — that  we 
wouldn't  have  to  bribe  Wall  Street  with  all  the  5  per  cent, 
bonds  it  could  carry  to  let  our  sacred  hoodoo  alone. 

We  sincerely  trust  that  Mr.  Cleveland  will  cease  to  worry 
about  "the  credit  of  our  currency" — will  not  wear  himself  to 
a  skeleton  trying  to  protect  the  Gold  Reserve.  The  cur- 
rency will  take  care  of  itself  if  the  politicians  will  but  re- 
strain themselves  until  a  plan  can  be  devised  for  placing  it 
altogether  under  the  control  of  commerce;  and  as  for  the 
Gold  Reserve,  he  might  as  well  let  it  go  to  join  Symrne's 
Hole,  or  the  long  exploded  fallacy  that  the  government  can 
make  a  currency  of  any  kind  that  is  "good  the  world  over." 
The  commerce  of  this  country  gives  coin  the  cold-shoulder, 
as  being  both  costly  and  clumsy;  and  we  have  never  yet 
been  able  to  build  a  gold  eagle  that  didn't  lose  its  tail-feath- 
ers and  become  simply  a  commodity  like  pork  and  potatoes 
the  moment  it  crossed  our  frontiers — worth  so  much  a  pound 
in  the  country  to  which  it  was  carried.  There  is  no  more 
reason  why  the  government  should  provide  commerce  with 
minted  gold  for  export  than  that  it  should  put  hot-house 
bouquets  on  the  beeves  we  send  abroad. 

The  Iconoclast  would  suggest  that  instead  of  increasing 
the  excise  taxes  to  enhance  the  public  revenues  during  the 
present  business  depression,  the  Gold  Reserve  be  applied  to 
defraying  the  legitimate  expenses  of  the  government.  If 


22  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

there  is  anything  calculated  to  discredit  our  paper  and  silver 
dollars  it  is  the  action  of  the  government  itself  in  discrimi- 
nating against  them  in  the  sale  of  its  bonds — in  persistently 
advertising  that  unless  it  can  do  what  now  appears  doubt- 
ful, they  must  infallibly  depreciate  50  per  cent.  Confidence 
is  the  basis  of  all  currency ;  hence  persistent  calamity-clacking 
— predictions  by  those  high  in  authority  that  it  would  depre- 
ciate in  purchasing  power — were  sufficient  to  make  the  peo- 
ple distrustful  even  of  gold  itself. 


THE  BEAUTEOUS  REBECCA. 
A  BILLET  D'AMOUR. 

Miss  Rebecca  Merlindy  Johnson,  Care  Post,  Houston,  Tex. 

My  Erstwhile  Own : — Pardon  me,  Merlindy,  dear,  for  ad- 
dressing you  thro'  the  columns  of  a  great  religious  journal, 
instead  of  slipping  my  tender  billy-doo  under  your  back 
gate  by  the  melancholy  light  of  the  gibbous  moon.  Condi- 
tions have  arisen  in  this  unkind  and  captious  age  which  make 
it  necessary  that  I  should  hang  my  torn  heart  upon  my 
sleeve  for  daws  to  peck  at,  instead  of  following  the  lead  of 
my  soulful  longings  and  enclosing  my  viscera  in  an  antique 
envelope,  perfumed  with  frangipanna,  and  firing  it  at  my 
Merlindy  thro'  the  mails.  You  know — or  I  will  grant  you 
do — the  poet  says,  ''What  great  ones  do  the  less  will  prat- 
tle of."  They  are  prattling  of  you  and  I  Merlindy.  In  the 
first  flush  of  our  fond  affections  we  did  forget  that  fixed  upon 
us  was  the  curious  gaze  of  the  hoi  polloi,  and  ere  we  were 
aware  Dame  Rumor  had  donned  her  Sunday  gown  and 
sailed  abroad  to  pour  into  the  prurient  public  ear  another 
tale  of  a  trusting  maid  undone  by  selfish  man — had  even 
hinted  that  you  were  playing  Madeline  to  my  Willie.  'Twas 
all  my  fault.  You  were  so  pure  and  unsuspecting,  so  little 
versed  in  the  ways  of  this  wicked  world,  and  I  should  have 
guarded  you  with  the  thoughtful  solicitude  of  a  careful  shep- 
herd shielding  from  a  sneaping  frost  the  fresh-dropped  fe- 
male lamb.  I  should  not  have  permitted  you  to  patter  about 
the  public  streets  in  male  attire  and  call  yourself  Rienzi  Mil- 
tiades — I  should  have  bade  you  beware  those  cute  little 
breeches  and  that  bob-tail  coat. 

Heaven  forfend  that  I  should  be  the  unhappy  cause  of 
your  spotless  character  being  called  in  question.  God  wot- 
teth  well  that  your  fair  name  and  fame  are  dearer  to  me 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  23 

than  the  ruddy  drops  that  visit  my  sad  heart.  (See  Don- 
nelly's Cryptogram.)  But  you  are  not  bearing  yourself 
toward  me  in  a  manner  to  allay  suspicion.  The  public  is 
quick  to  see  the  similitude  of  your  treatment  of  the  Apostle 
and  Miss  Pollard's  haughty  scorn  of  her  former  paramour, 
and  is  hinting  that  like  causes  produce  like  effects — is  even 
putting  its  tongue  in  its  larboard  cheek  and  suggesting  that 
"Hell  hath  no  fury  like  a  woman  scorned."  But  don't  you 
believe,  Merlindy,  that  the  Apostle  scorns  you.  He  knows 
your  worth,  and  will  stick  to  you,  thro'  good  and  evil  report, 
like  a  dead  game  sport  to  loaded  dice. 

"My  pen  is  pore,  my  ink  is  pail, 
But  love  for  you  shall  never  fale." 

Tho'  you  have  ceased  to  love  me,  and  decline  to  be  even 
a  sister  to  me,  I  cannot  forget  those  dear  old  days  that  are 
dead,  before  "Pinkie"  of  the  Hill  tribes  crept  into  our  am- 
brosial Eden  like  the  odor  of  Buffalo  Bayou  into  the  boudoir 
of  a  Houston  belle.  You  should  be  more  cautious,  Mer- 
lindy. You  should  remember  that  the  public  is  watching 
you  as  intently  as  a  nigger  preacher  eyes  the  plug  hat  cir- 
culated for  the  capture  of  small  coin.  Tho'  your  heart  may 
break  to-morrow  you  must  be  all  smiles  to-night.  If  you 
desire  to  spill  your  fond  affections  on  a  blond  vacuum 
chained  to  an  Aurora  Borealis  you  should  do  it  unostenta- 
tiously, and  thereby  dodge  the  damning  suspicion  that  your 
life  is  wrecked  and  that  you  are  throwing  away  the  frag- 
ments in  a  lit  of  hilarious  desperation.  You  should  not  ad- 
vertise the  fact  that  you  turn  the  hose  on  me  when  I  seek 
to  warble  some  pathetic  roundelay  or  work  off  an  Ella 
Wheeler  yearn  under  your  dormer  window.  You  should 
not  bruit  it  abroad  that  you  whistle  on  your  lily-white  rin- 
gers for  the  police  when  I  attempt  to  unbosom  my  pent-up 
agony  to  the  sympathetic  moon  in  your  back  yard. 

Rebecca  Merlindy,  my  soulful  bird  of  Paradise,  if  you 
have  really  soured  on  me — if  our  ecstatic  yum-yum  was  too 
intoxicatingly  sweet  for  a  steady  diet — I  shall  not  upbraid 
you ;  but  you  should  not  with  your  dainty  tootsie-wootsies, 
trample  on  a  true  heart,  nor  play  fast  and  loose  with  a  pure 
affection  that  has  unwittingly  warped  itself  about  your  lovely 
diaphragm  like  a  boa-constrictor  encircling  a  yearling  calf. 
You  have  a  right  to  discard  me,  Rebecca;  but  no  right  to 
drive  me  to  drink  by  turning  up  your  patrician  gold-cure 
nose  as  I  pass  humbly  by,  then  filling  the  white  horse  mous- 
tache of  Epictetus  Paregoric  Hill  with  hyblaean  honey. 

But  I  will  not  complain.    'Twere  better  to  have  loved  and 


24  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

lost  than  ne'er  to  have  loved  at  all.  Instead  of  hanging  my 
harp  on  the  willows  I  will  attune  it  to  the  soul-sob  key  and 
pour  forth  my  sad  lament  like  the  bulbul  warbling  to  the 
red,  red  rose,  while  she  presses  the  cruel  thorn  ever  deeper 
into  her  wounded  heart.  I  will  return  good  for  evil,  because 
I  am  built  that  way.  Instead  of  answering  scorn  with  scorn, 
as  little  souls  would  do,  I  will  bend  all  my  poor  talents  and 
wobbly  energies  to  the  holy  task  of  making  you  immortal. 
And  I  will  succeed,  or  burst  a  suspender  in  the  sacred  enter- 
prise. I  will  dramatize  our  tale  of  true  love  turned  awry, 
and  "Pinkie"  shall  play  the  heavy  villain — shall  hypnotize 
you  with  the  splendor  of  his  sunset  hair  and  make  you  err 
against  your  better  judgment.  I  will  weave  you  into  song 
and  story  like  a  thread  of  burnished  gold  in  a  somber  carpet 
of  rags,  or  a  clean  cuspidore  in  a  Populist  sanctum.  The 
ages  yet  to  be  shall  remember  you  as  the  Apostle's  sweet- 
heart, even  as  the  present  recalls  the  Laura  of  Petrarch,  the 
Heloise  of  Abelard  and  the  Dulcinea  of  Don  Quixote.  Tho' 
parted  in  life  we  will  be  united  in  death.  Posterity  will  at- 
tend to  that — will  scoop  together  our  pathetic  dust  and  plant 
it  in  some  romantic  spot,  where  the  shadow  of  the  quiver- 
ing aspen  falls  and  the  bull-frog's  melancholy  croak  makes 
life  not  worth  the  living.  And  every  lover  throughout  the 
wide,  wide  world  whose  affection  has  slipped  its  trolley-pole, 
will  come  apilgriming  as  to  some  sacred  shrine,  pull  off  an 
unpainted  picket  and  drop  upon  our  lowly  mound  the  sym- 
pathetic sob  and  scalding  tear. 

Ah,  Merlindy,  you  may  not  be  so  beautiful  as  Ida  Wells, 
nor  so  intellectual  as  Mrs.  Lease ;  but  my  soulful  song  shall 
so  gloss  your  imperfections  o'er  that  in  the  unborn  ages  yet 
to  be  you'll  loom  up  on  the  sensuous  cigarette  or  soothing 
''hardware"  sign  a  very  Hebe,  and  no  living  picture  exhibit 
will  be  complete  without  some  counterfeit  presentment  of 
your  personal  pulchritude,  attired  in  hand-me-down  pants. 
Adios,  but  not  farewell. 

"THE  APOSTLE." 


THE  BUCK  NEGRO. 

I  once  severly  shocked  the  pseudo-philanthropists  by  sug- 
gesting that  if  the  South  is  ever  to  rid  herself  of  the  negro 
rape-fiend  she  must  take  a  day  off  and  kill  every  member 
of  the  accursed  race  that  declines  to  leave  the  country.  I 
am  not  wedded  to  my  plan ;  but,  like  the  Populists,  I  do  in- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  25 

sist  that  those  who  object  to  it  are  in  duty  bound  to  offer 
something  better. 

We  have  tried  the  restraining  influence  of  religion  and  the 
elevating  forces  of  education  upon  the  negro  without  avail. 
We  have  employed  moral  suasion  and  legal  penalties ;  have 
incarcerated  the  offenders  for  life  at  hard  labor,  and  hanged 
them  by  the  neck  in  accordance  with  statutory  law.  We 
have  hunted  the  black  rape-fiend  to  death  with  hounds,  bored 
him  with  buckshot ;  fricasseed  him  over  slow  fires  and  flayed 
him  alive;  but  the  despoilment  of  white  women  by  these 
brutal  imps  of  darkness  and  the  devil  is  still  of  daily  occur- 
ence.  The  baleful  shadow  of  the  black  man  hangs  over 
every  Southern  home  like  the  sword  of  Damocles,  like  the 
blight  of  death — an  avatar  of  infamy,  a  decree  of  damna- 
tion. 

There  is  not  to-day  in  all  this  land  of  Christ  an  aged 
mother  who  is  safe  one  single  hour  unless  guarded  by  watch- 
ful sons,  a  wife  who  may  rest  secure  beyond  the  reach  of  her 
husband's  rifle,  a  female  infant  but  may  be  sacrificed  to  feed 
some  black  monster's  lust  the  moment  it  leaves  its  father's 
breast. 

In  the  name  of  Israel's  God,  what  shall  we  do? 

This  condition  of  affairs  is  becoming  intolerable.  A 
man's  first  duty  is  not  to  an  alien  and  inferior  race,  but  to 
his  family.  It  is  much  better  to  shoot  a  negro  before  he 
commits  an  irreparable  crime  against  the  honor  of  a  family 
than  to  hang  him  afterwards. 

Drive  out  the  "nigger" — young  and  old,  male  and  female 
— or  drive  him  into  the  earth!  It  may  be  urged  that  the 
"good  negro"  would  suffer  with  the  bad.  It  is  impossible  to 
distinguish  the  one  from  the  other  until  it  is  too  late.  It 
were  better  that  a  thousand  "good  negroes" — if  so  many 
there  be — should  suffer  death  or  banishment  than  that  one 
good  white  woman  should  be  debauched.  We  must  con- 
sider ourselves  first,  others  afterwards.  The  rights  of  the 
white  man  are  paramount,  and  if  we  do  not  maintain  them 
at  any  cost  we  deserve  only  dishonor. 

During  the  slavery  regime  the  negro  kept  his  place  like 
any  other  beast  of  the  field.  He  no  more  dreamed  of  co- 
habitation with  white  women  than  does  the  monkey  of  mat- 
ing with  the  swan ;  but  when  his  shackles  were  stricken  off 
and  he  was  accorded  political  equality  with  his  old-time  mas- 
ter he  became  presumptuous,  insolent — actually  imagined 
that  the  foolish  attempt  of  fanatics  to  humanize  him  had 
been  successful — that  a  law  of  nature  had  been  repealed  by 
act  of  Congress !  If  we  could  but  restore  the  negro  to  his 


26  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

old  ante-bellum  condition  of  involuntary  servitude  and  give 
him  time  to  forget  the  social  fallacies  with  which  he  has 
been  inoculated  by  misguided  theorists,  all  might  be  well 
with  Sambo ;  but  that  is  out  of  the  question.  We  do  not 
want  to  re-enslave  him — he  is  not  worth  it.  And  if  we  de- 
sired to  do  so,  the  world,  which  is  crazed  with  its  own  fool- 
ish cackle  of  "equality  and  fraternity/'  would  not  permit  it. 

No,  we  could  not  revive  old  customs  if  we  would.  There 
are  too  many  long-haired  men  and  short-haired  women  pick- 
ing up  a  more  or  less  honest  livelihood  by  experimenting 
with  Sambo  at  our  expense,  his  wonderful  "progress,"  his 
divine  "rights"  and  his  devilish  "wrongs,"  to  permit  serious 
consideration  of  what  is  really  best  for  him. 

The  negro  is  to  the  American  social  organism  what  a 
pound  of  putty  would  be  in  the  stomach  of  a  dypseptic.  The 
sooner  we  realize  this  fact  and  spew  him  out,  the  better.  It 
were  as  wise  to  make  the  eagle  and  the  crow  tenants  of  the 
same  eyre  as  the  white  and  black  man  of  the  same  territory ; 
as  sensible  to  yoke  Pegasus  and  a  plow-horse  as  to  make  the 
Caucasian  and  the  African  co-rulers  of  the  same  country. 
The  attempts  of  sociologists  to  "harmonize  the  races"  are 
as  absurd  as  trying  to  bring  into  the  same  diapason  the 
twanging  of  a  jewsharp  and  the  music  of  the  spheres — the 
effort  to  make  the  negro  an  element  of  strength  to  the  na- 
tion's energy  as  misdirected  as  the  labors  of  Gulliver's  scien- 
tists at  the  academy  of  Lagado.  The  American  nation  would 
be  billions  of  dollars  better  off  to-day  had  Ham  failed  to  get 
into  the  ark.  The  negro  has  been  the  immediate  cause  of 
more  bitterness  and  bloodshed  than  his  entire  race,  from  its 
genesis  to  the  present,  is  worth,  and  he  will  continue  the 
fruitful  cause  of  trouble  so  long  as  he  is  permitted  to  remain. 

The  XlVth  amendment  to  the  Constitution  is  a  flagrant 
violation  of  natural  law — of  the  law  that  the  greater  and  less 
cannot  be  equal,  that  matter  must  be  subject  unto  mind,  that 
wisdom  was  born  to  rule  and  ignorance  to  obey.  To  deny 
that  the  greater  shall  govern  the  lesser  intellect  is  to  abro- 
gate man's  right  to  rule  the  beast  and  God's  authority  over 
Adam's  sons. 

The  greatest  injury  ever  done  the  people  of  the  South 
was  self-inflicted — the  introduction  of  negro  slavery.  The 
next  greatest  was  the  act  of  the  Federal  Government  in  mak- 
ing the  black  man  co-ordinate  sovereign  of  the  State.  It 
would  have  been  a  thousand  times  better  for  the  Southern 
people  had  they  adopted  paganism  or  polygamy  instead  of 
negro  slavery — a  thousand  times  better  for  them  and  the 
nation  at  large  had  the  Federal  Government  confiscated 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  27 

every  foot  of  soil  in  the  insurgent  States,  put  the  torch  to 
every  dwelling,  destroyed  every  factory  and  filled  every  har- 
bor with  the  wreck  of  railroads  and  the  debris  of  business 
blocks  instead  of  putting  the  ballot  in  the  hands  of  the  black. 
The  ruin  wrought  by  torch  and  torpedo  could  have  been 
quickly  repaired;  the  damage  done  by  the  XlVth  amend- 
ment is  well-nigh  irreparable.  Burning  with  the  accursed 
lust  for  political  power,  the  Republican  party,  like  another 
shameless  Tarquin,  held  the  knife  at  the  throat  of  the  South- 
ern Lucrece  while  it  robbed  her  of  her  honor,  made  her  an 
object  of  contempt,  her  name  a  byword  and  a  reproach. 
Pitifullest  blunder  of  all  the  ages!  Most  damning  infamy 
ever  perpetrated  since  the  dawn  of  Time !  Fearfullest  pen- 
alty brave  men  ever  paid  for  daring  death  for  conscience's 
sake! 

This  is  a  republic.  The  supreme  power  is,  ostensibly  at 
least,  vested  in  the  people.  The  voter  is  the  sovereign.  Sup- 
pose that  it  were  an  absolute  monarchy :  Would  it  not  be  a 
mistake  unparalleled,  a  crime  unspeakable  to  take  from  an 
ignorant,  brutal  slave  his  shackles  and  place  upon  his  stupid 
head  a  crown?  The  Republican  party  did  even  worse.  A 
sovereign  cannot  long  oppress  a  brave  and  spirited  people. 
Let  him  issue  an  edict  that  meets  with  general  disapproval 
and  it  is  laughed  to  scorn.  Should  he  attempt  to  enforce  it 
he  is  dragged  from  the  throne.  But  the  Republican  party 
corrupted  a  sovereign  from  whose  edict  there  is  no  appeal. 
It  has  debased  the  great  army  of  voters,  poisoned  the  politi- 
cal organism  by  injecting  into  it  a  vast  mass  of  ignorance 
destitute  of  even  the  saving  grace  of  virtue. 

Had  the  negro  been  naturally  the  intellectual  peer  of  the 
white  man,  it  would  have  been  a  grievous  blunder  to  give 
him  the  ballot,  to  force  political  responsibility  upon  him  un- 
til at  least  a  generation  after  his  emancipation.  He  was  an 
untutored  savage  in  his  native  land,  making  no  appreciable 
progress.  He  was  captured,  like  any  other  wild  beast, 
brought  to  America  and  sold  into  slavery.  Here  he  was 
taught,  not  how  to  wisely  rule,  but  to  servilely  obey.  It 
required  a  thousand  years  of  education  to  fit  the  thoughtful 
Saxon  and  the  quick-witted  Celt  for  the  duties  and  responsi- 
bilities of  American  sovereignty;  the  stupid  Ethiopian  was 
fitted  for  them  by  the  scratch  of  a  pen  and  a  partisan  vote ! 
Transformed  from  semi-savagery  to  super-civilization  by  the 
power  of  a  political  fiat!  From  slave  to  sovereign  by  the 
magic  wand  of  genie!  Fitted  for  American  sovereignty! 
He  was  not  fitted  for  it.  Ten  thousand  years  of  civilization 
and  education  could  no  more  qualify  the  negro  for  self-gov- 


28  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

ernment  than  it  could  raise  to  the  intellectual  level  of  a  lousy 
ape  the  piebald  jackass  who  presides  over  the  destinies  of 
the  Houston  Post.  True,  it  is  that  there  are  some  negroes 
with  a  suggestion  of  intellect ;  but  they  are  usually  negroes 
only  in  name — mongrels  in  whose  veins  flows  the  blood  of 
some  depraved  Caucasian  bum.  The  pure  blood  blacks  who 
have  exhibited  intellectual  and  moral  qualities  superior  to 
those  of  the  monkey,  are  few  and  far  between.  And  yet 
the  pure-blood  Ethiop  is  generally  a  much  better  and  safer 
member  of  society  than  the  "yaller  nigger,"  who  appears  to 
inherit  the  vices  of  both  races  and  the  virtues  of  neither. 

The  negro  vote  is  dangerous  because  of  its  ignorance, 
doubly  so  because  of  its  venality.  It  is  utterly  irresponsible, 
altogether  reckless,  knows  little  of  principle,  cares  less,  and 
will  follow  wherever  the  most  blatant  demagogue  or  the 
most  liberal  purse  will  lead.  Is  it  any  wonder  that,  there  is 
occasional  "bulldozing"  at  the  polls  in  the  Black  Belt — that 
men  whose  ancestors  wrung  Magna  Charta  from  King  John 
and  recognition  of  American  independence  from  King 
George,  should  decline  to  be  dominated  by  the  bastard  spawn 
of  white  bummers  and  black  bawds  ? 

The  presence  of  the  negro  in  the  South  has  kept  this  sec- 
tion a  century  in  arrears  of  what  it  would  otherwise  be.  It 
has  prevented  white  immigration ;  it  has  kept  out  capital ;  it 
has  bred  a  contempt  among  the  Southern  whites  for  labor; 
it  has  fomented  strife  between  sections  and  is  still  fostering 
provincial  prejudice,  fanning  the  fires  of  sectional  hate.  The 
South  could  afford  to  give  the  negro,  black  and  "yaller,"  a 
hundred  millions  of  money  to  leave  the  country  and  never 
return.  The  negro  is,  for  a  verity,  the  bete-noire  of  the 
South,  a  millstone  about  her  neck,  tending  ever  to  drag  her 
down  into  the  depths  of  social  and  political  degradation. 
Every  Southern  man,  every  man  of  whatever  clime,  long 
resident  here,  and  not  sans  eyes,  ears  and  understanding, 
knows  this  to  be  true. 

Does  the  Southern  press  proclaim  it?  Not  at  all.  The 
Southern  press,  believing  the  black  man  a  fixture — that  the 
disease  is  incurable — with  a  burst  of  optimism  that  discounts 
that  of  the  man  who  thanked  God  for  the  itch  because  of  the 
luxury  of  scratching,  proclaims  his  presence  an  inestimable 
boon,  a  transcendent  blessing.  Every  day  we  are  told  that 
the  negro  is  "the  natural  laborer  of  the  cotton,  cane  and  rice 
field" — whatever  that  novel  economic  theorem  may  mean. 
If  it  meant  thereby  that  white  labor  is  not  adapted  to  those 
industries,  it  needs  no  further  refutation  than  a  glance  at  ex- 
isting conditions.  In  every  Southern  State  and  county 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  29 

white  men  are  performing  identically  the  same  kind  of  labor 
as  the  black,  and  performing  it  better.  There  is  not  a  spot 
within  the  broad  confines  of  the  United  States  where  the 
African  can  live  and  labor  that  the  Caucasian  cannot  live  as 
well  and  labor  with  more  effect. 

Remove  the  negro  from  the  South  and  this  section  will 
quickly  become  the  most  populous,  prosperous  and  progres- 
sive portion  of  the  American  Union.  But  will  the  negro  be 
removed?  Not  at  all.  The  two  great  political  parties  need 
him  in  their  manufacturing  industry — the  making  of  politi- 
cal "issues." 

The  negro  will  remain  right  where  he  is,  wear  the  cast-off 
clothes  of  the  white  man,  steal  his  fowls,  black  his  boots  and 
rape  his  daughters,  while  the  syphilitic  "yaller  gal"  corrupts 
his  sons.  Yes,  the  negro  will  stay,  stay  until  he  is  faded 
out  by  fornication — until  he  is  absorbed  by  the  stronger  race, 
as  it  has  absorbed  many  a  foul  thing  heretofore. 


A  VISION  OF  HEAVEN. 

It  was  in  the  year  of  our  Lord  1893,  the  seventh  day  of 
the  ninth  month,  hour  midnight.  The  editor  had  toiled  all 
day  trying  to  harmonize  the  two  wings  of  the  Texas  Dem- 
ocracy— had  held  out  the  olive  branch  of  peace  until  his  arm 
ached.  He  was  now  reclining  on  a  pile  of  exchanges  in  the 
sanctum,  listening  to  the  dreamy  rhythm  of  the  music  that 
floated  in  from  an  adjacent  beer  garden,  the  monotonous 
clickety-click  of  the  Mergenthalers  and  the  impromptu  ob- 
servations of  the  office  cat  to  a  visiting  Thomas  feline  on 
the  back  gallery.  The  music  of  the  beer  garden  orchestra 
gradually  swelled  into  a  mighty  anthem,  and  the  office  cat's 
sad  complaint  became  a  paean  of  praise,  the  rat-tat-tat  of 
the  Mergenthalers,  the  click  of  golden  slippers,  keeping  time 
to  celestial  music  on  the  ballroom  floor  of  a  house  riot  built 
with  hands,  and  the  fitful  gleam  of  an  arc  light,  filtering 
through  the  dust  and  grime  of  an  uncurtained  window  a 
Jacob's  ladder,  on  the  top  rung  of  which  a  seraph  poised 
with  outstretched  wings,  like  a  blue  jay  on  the  top  twig  of 
a  Washingtonian  cherry  tree. 

"Ascend/'  he  commanded,  and  the  editor  complied. 

"What's  the  matter  now  ?"  he  asked  the  seraph,  as  the 
latter  gave  him  a  lift  and  pulled  in.  the  ladder  like  a  country 
belle  taking  the  cube-root  of  a  yard  of  gum.  "Has  another 
rebellion  broken  out  in  Heaven?" 


30  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

"Naw,"  said  the  seraph  with  a  shrug  of  his  wings;  "I 
thought  perhaps  you'd  like  to  write  up  our  town.  Of  course, 
if  you  do  so  it  must  be  for  its  news  features.  We  are  not 
placing  any  advertising  at  present.  Times  are  too  hard,  and 
corner  lots  in  the  New  Jerusalem  are  not  what  they  were 
in  the  city's  boom  days.  Immigration  has  fallen  off  to  such 
an  extent  that  St.  Peter  says  the  entrance  fees  don't  pay  for 
greasing  the  hinges  of  the  gate,  and  he's  thinking  of  pad- 
locking it  and  applying  for  a  new  job.  The  committee  on 
ways  and  means  say  we'll  have  to  pave  the  streets  with  silver 
and  set  the  throne  with  stage  jewels  if  business  doesn't  im- 
prove pretty  soon." 

"What's  the  matter?" 

"Too  much  hide-bound  orthodoxy  and  too  little  Christian- 
ity. Now,  were  you  to  suggest  that  St.  John  had  a  bad  case 
of  the  jim jams  when  he  saw  all  those  funny  things,  the  peo- 
ple down  below  would  probably  mob  you.  The  preachers 
would  thunder  against  you  from  the  pulpit,  and  Deacon 
Twogood  pronounce  you  a  blasphemous  atheist.  Of  course, 
every  man's  an  atheist  who  doesn't  see  God  through  Deacon 
Twogood's  telescope,  and  every  man  a  blasphemer  who  ap- 
plies historical  criticism  to  the  Bible — who  attempts  to  sep- 
arate the  word  of  God  from  the  folly  of  the  redacteurs. 
Still,  these  good  people  continue  to  build  palatial  churches  in 
which  to  practice  hypocrisy,  while  men  with  families  to  sup- 
port are  glad  of  a  chance  to  toil  from  sun  to  sun  three  times 
a  week  for  a  dollar  a  day !  A  man  in  that  condition  natur- 
ally becomes  an  anarchist,  if  not  a  criminal,  and  if  his  chil- 
dren do  not  turn  out  thieves  and  his  wife  a  prostitute  it  is 
no  fault  of  either  society  or  the  Church.  I  think  the  Al- 
mighty is  getting  tired  of  lending  His  name  to  such  religious 
layouts,  and  I  don't  blame  Him.  If  He  ever  asks  my  advice 
I'll  tell  Him  to  smash  with  His  thunderbolts  every  church 
on  earth  that  costs  more  than  $5,000  and  start  the  fool-killer 
on  the  trail  of  every  preacher  who  prattles  about  blasphemy 
while  children  are  begging  bread  and  women  are  dying  of 
want.  What  the  old  world  needs  is  a  religion  of  humanity 
—one  broad  enough  and  liberal  enough  to  take  up  into  its 
bosom  every  creature  created  in  the  image  of  God." 

By  this  time  the  editor  and  the  other  seraph  had  reached 
a  narrow  gate,  over  which  was  inscribed  in  golden  capitals : 
'Orthodox  Heaven."  The  seraph  pulled  the  bell  and  St. 
Peter  peeped  out  through  the  wicket.  Seeing  that  it  was 
a  newspaper  man  he  threw  wide  the  gate  and  removed  his 
crown  as  a  mark  of  respect. 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  31 

"I'd  best  give  you  a  return  check,"  he  said.  "You're  from 
Texas,  and  you'll  want  to  go  back  in  an  hour  or  two." 

"Where's  Judas  Iscariot?"  asked  the  traveler. 

"Oh,"  said  the  man  on  the  door,  "Judas  has  been  in  hell 
nearly  2,000  years.  You  see,  he  sold  his  Saviour  for  thirty 
pieces  of— 

"Yes,  yes;  but  he  had  the  decency  to  go  hang  himself. 
Now  there  was  another  disciple  who  went  back  on  his  Mas- 
ter because  he  feared  the  rabble  would  ride  him  on  a  rail, 
then  sat  down  and  bawled  like  a  spanked  baby  because  he 
was  a  born  coward  and " 

But  St.  Peter  was  pointing  out  to  a  Populist  the  shortest 
road  to  Perdition  and  evidently  did  not  hear.  A  man  of 
majestic  mien  and  carrying  a  golden  harp  came  forward  and 
grasped  the  wanderer's  hand. 

"Do  they  still  read  my  poetry  down  below?"  he  asked 
eagerly.  "What  do  the  modern  critics  say  of  it?" 

"Permit  me  to  introduce  King  David,"  said  the  seraph. 
"Davy,  this  is  the  editor  of  the  Great  Religious."  The 
psalmist  was  delighted  and  wanted  to  present  the  pilgrim  to 
Mrs.  David,  No.  923,  but  the  editor  checked  him.  He  didn't 
care  to  make  female  acquaintances  in  a  strange  city. 

"Let's  see;  aren't  you  the  party  who  despoiled  Uriah's 
wife,  then  had  that  gentleman  murdered  to  conceal  your 
crime  ?" 

"Oh,  please  don't  put  that  in  the  papers,"  pleaded  Saul's 
successor.  "Of  course,  on  earth  little  things  like  that  are 
charged  up  to  a  fellow,  but  they  make  no  difference  in  the 
orthodox  heaven.  If  a  man  is  only  pious  and  strictly  ortho- 
dox, all  things  are  forgiven  him.  Ah,  here  is  my  distin- 
guished ancestor,  Father  Abraham.  Allow  me  to  present 
you." 

"Come  nestle  in  this  bosom  with  Lazarus,"  said  the  patri- 
arch ;  but  the  pilgrim,  being  somewhat  choice  of  his  bed- 
fellows, dodged  the  embrace. 

"Are  you  the  party  who  gave  up  his  wife  to  the  lustful 
Orientals,  saying,  'She  is  my  sister?'  Are  you  the  party  who 
preferred  the  life  of  a  cuckold  to  the  death  of  a  gentleman?" 
But  he  had  already  seized  a  harp  and  joined  in  the  serpen- 
tine dance  about  the  throne,  crying  with  his  cracked  voice, 
"Holy,  holy,  holy." 

Lot  and  his  two  daughters  came  tripping  by  to  the  sound 
of  timbrel.  The  seraph  beckoned  the  husband  of  the  pillar 
of  salt  and  he  came  to  a  standstill. 

"You  are  the  party  whose  righteousness  saved  him  when 
Sodom  and  Gomorrah  did  the  Herculaneum  act?"  He 


32  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

nodded.  "Well,  I'd  just  like  to  ask  you,  for  the  information 
of  a  medical  fraternity,  how  a  man  who  is  dead  drunk  can 
accomplish  what  you  did  in  the  cave  at " 

"Don't  mention  it,"  pleaded  the  beloved  of  the  Lord,  and 
he  blew  a  blast  on  a  golden  trumpet,  pulled  his  crown  about 
his  ears  and  joined  in  the  sacred  dance  with  his  youngest 
daughter  for  partner. 

"Who  are  those  people  bearing  down  upon  us  with  crash- 
ing cymbals  and  loud  hosannahs  ?"  asked  the  scribe. 

"That,"  replied  the  seraph,  "is  Murderers'  Band.  Those 
people  were  all  hanged  for  infamous  crimes ;  but  when  they 
found  they  were  in  for  it — that  they  could  not  get  a  com- 
mutation of  sentence  to  life  imprisonment — repented  and 
were  jerked  to  Jesus.  That  fellow  who  leads  the  procession 
and  whose  hallelujah  is  particularly  unctuous,  murdered  his 
mistress,  a  sweet  little  girl  whom  he  had  debauched,  and 
whom  he  compelled  to  enter  a  house  of  infamy  to  supply  him 
with  whisky  money.  The  papers  printed  an  account  of  the 
crime  and  his  execution  some  time  ago." 

"Catch  the  celestial  bird  and  give  him  to  me,"  pleaded  the 
scribe.  "I  long  to  hear  him  warble."  He  came  with  his 
ambrosial  locks  streaming  wide  on  the  celestial  air,  a  song  in 
his  mouth,  an  instrument  of  melody  in  his  hand. 

"Hello,  Jim!  How  did  you  break  in  here?  Where's 
Julia?" 

"Oh,  Julia's  in  hell,"  said  Jim  gaily,  as  he  swept  the 
strings  of  his  instrument  and  cried,  "Glory,  glory,  glory !" 

"You  see,  she  didn't  have  time  to  repent.  She  tried  to 
shake  me  and  I  brained  her  with  a  hatchet.  I  got  religion, 
and  here  I  am,  with  two  pair  of  reversible  wings — came  di- 
rect from  the  scaffold.  But  Julia's  frizzling  in  everlasting 
fire.  Strike  the  timbrel,  blow  the  trumpet  and  let  there  be 
a  joyful  noise  unto  the " 

"Whoa!  Shut  off  that  sanctified  Ta-ra-ra  Boom-de-aye 
and  tell  me  about  Julia.  She  was  a  child  pure  as  a  lily, 
sweet  as  the  incense  that  rises  from  Buddha's  altar.  You 
led  her  astray.  You  dragged  her  down  to  the  lowest  depths 
ever  touched  by  womankind.  You  beat  her.  You  brought 
Chinamen  to  visit  her,  took  the  price  of  her  shame,  bought 
whisky,  and  murdered  her  because  she  dared  plead  with  you 
not  to  further  humiliate  her.  You  say  that  she  is  in  hell. 
Do  you  ever  go  to  see  her?  Do  you  ever  carry  a  cup  of  cold 
water  to  cool  her  parched  lips  ?  Does  her  agony  haunt  you  ? 
Does  it  cause  the  anthem  to  die  on  your  lips  and  the  hot  tears 
to  scald  your  cheeks?  Do  you  pray  God  to  allow  you  to 
change  places  with  her?" 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  33 

"What  are  you  giving  me  ?  T'ink  I'm  a  chump  ?  We  'uns 
up  here  don't  worry  about  der  lost.  That's  their  biz ;  see  ?" 
And  he  was  gone — chanting  Solomon's  assignation  song. 

Just  then  John  Calvin  came  along.  "Where's  Servetus?" 
asked  the  scribe.  "Where  should  he  be  but  in  hell?"  re- 
torted John.  "He  was  a  heretic  and  I  burned  him.  Of 
course,  he  was  an  honest,  truthful,  kindly-hearted  man,  with 
more  brains  in  his  little  finger  than  I  had  in  my  head ;  but 
he  got  wrong  in  his  scriptural  views,  and,  as  in  duty  bound, 
I  made  a  bonfire  of  him.  Praise  the  Lord  God  Almighty, 
who  is  a  merciful  God !"  And  he  drifted  on  to  meet  Henry 
VIII,  who  was  gaily  whistling,  "Catharine,  my  Catharine." 

"Have  you  any  respectable  people  up  here?"  asked  the 
scribe  pulling  the  seraph  aside  by  one  of  his  pin-feathers. 

"Well,"  said  he,  glancing  about  apprehensively,  "to  give 
you  a  straight  deal,  I  think  the  respectable  people  are  all  in 
hell.  And  to  tell  you  truly,  I  believe  they  are  far  happier 
down  there  than  this  job-lot  of  pious  murderers  and  sancti- 
fied hypocrites  up  here.  Of  course,  the  climatic  conditions 
are  not  conducive  of  ecstasy,  but  the  society  is  infinitely 
more  select,  and  there's  such  a  thing  as  human  sympathy  and 
love  among  the  lost.  Of  course,  I  don't  want  you  to  give 
me  away,  but " 

"Nine  columns  short — wires  all  flat — two  machines  ker- 
flummixed — news  editor  tearing  his  hair — foreman  cussin' 
a  blue  streak — what'n  Helen  Blazes  we  goin'  o'  do  ?  Say  ?" 

It  was  the  "devil.''  The  "Vision  of  Heaven"  vanished, 
and  the  weary  editor  cried  out  in  agony,  "This  is  hell !" 


APOSTLE  VS.  PAGAN. 

Col.  R.  G.  Ingersoll : 

My  Dear  Colonel : — I  have  not  picked  up  my  pen  for  the 
express  purpose  of  annihilating  you  at  one  fell  swoop.  Even 
were  such  the  case,  I  do  not  flatter  myself  that  your  impend- 
ing doom  would  cause  you  to  miss  meals  or  lose  sleep,  for 
you  have  become  somewhat  used  to  being  knocked  off  the 
Christmas  tree  by  theological  disputants  from  the  back  dis- 
tricts. At  least  once  each  lunar  month  for  long  years  past 
your  quivering  diaphragm  has  been  slammed  up  against  the 
shrinking  face  of  nature  by  mental  microbes,  or  walked  on 
by  ambitious  doodle-bugs,  who  wondered  next  day  to  learn 
that  you  were  absorbing  your  rations  with  clock-work  regu- 
larity and  doing  business  at  the  same  old  stand.  I  once  saw 


34  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

an  egotistical  brindle-pup  joyfully  bestride  the  collar  of  an 
adult  wild-cat,  and  the  woeful  result  convinced  me  that  Am- 
bition and  Judgment  should  blithely  foot  it  hand  in  hand. 
That  is  why,  my  dear  Colonel,  I  approach  you  by  siege  and 
parallel,  instead  of  capering  gaily  down  your  right- o'-way 
like  a  youthful  William  goat  seeking  a  head-end  collision 
with  a  runaway  freight  train. 

Without  any  view  of  paving  the  way  for  a  future  loan,  I 
tell  you  frankly  that  I  admire  you  very  much.  Your  public 
record  and  private  life  prove  you  to  be  one  of  God's  noblest 
— and  rarest — works,  an  honest  man.  That  you  are  the 
equal  morally  and  the  superior  mentally  of  any  man  who 
has  presumed  to  criticise  you  must  be  conceded.  The  preju- 
dices of  honesty  are  entitled  to  consideration  and  the  judg- 
ment of  genius  to  respect  bordering  on  reverence;  but  in 
this  age  of  almost  universal  inquiry  we  cannot  accept  any 
man,  however  wise,  as  infallible  pope  in  the  realm  of  intell- 
lect  and  declare  that  from  his  ipse  di.rit  there  shall  be  no 
appeal.  That  were  intellectual  slavery,  the  most  degrading 
species  of  bondage,  and  it  is  your  greatest  glory  that  you 
have  ever  been  the  apostle  of  liberty — liberty  of  the  hand 
and  liberty  of  the  brain.  More  than  all  other  men  of  your 
generation  you  have  fostered  independence  of  thought  and 
the  search  for  new  truth ;  hence  you  cannot  complain  if  the 
fierce  light  which  you  have  taught  the  world  to  turn  full  and 
fair  upon  cults  and  creeds,  should  be  employed  to  discern 
the  false  logic  of  the  great  critic  himself. 

In  your  warfare  upon  hypocrisy  and  humbuggery  I  am 
with  you  heart  and  soul.  I  will  set  my  foot  as  far  as  who 
goes  farthest  in  the  exposure  of  frauds  and  fakes  of  every 
class  and  kind,  tho'  hedged  about  with  the  superstitions  of 
a  thousand  centuries  and  licensed  by  prescriptive  right  to 
perpetrate  a  brutal  wrong;  but  it  does  not  follow  because 
some  church  communicants  are  hypocrites  that  all  religion 
is  a  humbug ;  that  because  the  Bible  winks  at  incest  and  rob- 
bery, murder  and  slavery,  the  book  is  but  a  tissue  of  foolish 
falsehoods ;  that  because  Almighty  God  has  not  seen  proper 
to  reveal  himself  in  all  his  supernal  splendor  to  Messrs. 
Hume  and  Voltaire,  Pan  and  Ingersoll  the  world  has  no  good 
reason  for  belief  in  his  existence — that  because  the  dead  do 
not  come  back  to  us  with  a  diagram  of  the  New  Jerusalem  it 
were  folly  to  believe  the  soul  of  man  immortal. 

My  dear  Colonel,  your  mighty  intellect  has  not  yet  com- 
prehended the  philosophy  of  religion.  Oratorically  you  soar 
like  the  condor  when  its  shadow  falls  upon  the  highest  peaks 
of  the  Andes,  but  logically  you  grope  among  the  pestilential 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  35 

shadows  of  an  intellectual  Dismal  Swamp,  ever  mistaking 
shadow  for  substance.  You  are  frittering  away  your  mighty 
intellectual  strength  with  the  idiosynciasies  of  creeds  and  the 
clumsy  detail  of  cults,  instead  of  considering  the  psychologi- 
cal phenomena  of  religion  in  its  entirety.  You  descend  from 
the  realm  of  philosophy  to  assume  the  role  of  scholastic — to 
dispute  with  little  men  anent  points  of  doctrine,  to  wrangle 
with  dogmatists  regarding  their  conception  to  the  Deity. 

An  ignoramus  believes  the  Bible  because  of  the  miracles, 
and  because  of  the  miracles  an  Ingersoll  disbelieves  it — and 
both  are  equally  blind.  A  cult  is  simply  an  expression,  more 
or  less  crude,  of  the  religious  sentiment  of  a  people,  the  poor 
garment  with  which  finite  man  clothes  Infinity.  Would  you 
quarrel  with  Science  because  it  is  not  yet  made  perfect? 
Would  you  condemn  music  because  of  an  occasional  discord  ? 
Would  you  reject  history  altogether  because  amid  a  world  of 
truth  there  are  preserved  some  fables  such  as  tempted  the 
satire  of  Cervantes  ?  Would  you  banish  the  sun  from  heaven 
because  of  its  spots  or  declare  Love  a  monster  because  born 
of  Passion? 

The  real  question  at  issue  is  not  whether  the  miracles  be 
fact  or  fable ;  Mahomet,  the  duly  ordained  prophet  of  Allah, 
or  an  ignorant  adventurer ;  Jonah  a  delegate  of  the  Deity  or 
the  father  of  Populism — whether  Christ  was  born  of  an 
earthly  father  or  drew  his  vigor  direct  from  the  loins  of  om- 
nipotent God.  Let  us  leave  these  details  to  the  dogmatists, 
these  non-essentials  to  the  sectarians.  Let  us  consider  the 
religion  of  the  world  in  its  entirety,  with  the  full  under- 
standing that  all  sects  are  essentially  the  same. 

The  core  of  all  religion  is  the  worship  of  a  Supreme 
Power,  and  the  belief  in  man's  immortality.  That  is  the  cen- 
tral idea,  around  which  the  imagination  of  man  has  woven 
many  a  complicated  web,  some  beautiful  as  Arachne's  robe, 
some  barbaric  and  repulsive,  but  all  of  little  worth.  The 
wise  man,  the  true  philosopher,  will  not  mistake  the  machin- 
ery of  a  religion  for  the  religious  idea,  the  garment  which 
ignorance  weaves  for  Omniscience,  for  God  himself. 

Even  if  we  grant  that  the  Creator  never  yet  communicated 
directly  with  the  creature ;  that  man  has  not  seen  with  mortal 
eyes  beyond  the  veil  that  shrouds  the  two  eternities,  it  does 
not  follow  that  religious  faith  is  but  arrant  folly,  that  God  is 
non-extant  and  man  but  the  pitiful  creature  of  blind  force. 
The  dumb  brute  knows  many  things  it  was  never  taught, 
and  might  not  man,  the  greatest  of  the  animal  creation,  be 
gifted  with  a  knowledge  not  based  upon  experience?  So  far 
as  observation  goes,  there  is  provision  for  the  satisfaction 


36  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

of  every  passion,  and  the  most  powerful  of  all  passions  is  the 
dread  of  annihilation — the  longing  for  continual  life.  If 
death  ends  all  then  here  is  a  violation  of  "natural  law" — a 
miracle !  And  you,  my  dear  Colonel,  do  not  believe  in  mira- 
cles. If  we  discard  Revelation  and  take  Reason  for  our  su- 
preme guide,  we  must  infallibly  conclude  that  the  devotional 
instinct  implanted  in  the  heart  of  the  entire  human  race  has 
its  correlative — that  the  longing  for  immortal  life  which 
burns  in  the  breast  of  man  was  not  a  brutal  mistake,  else  con- 
cede Nature  a  poor  blunderer  and  all  this  prattle  anent  her 
''immutable  laws"  mere  nonsense. 

Before  ridiculing  Revelation  and  mocking  at  Inspiration 
were  it  not  well  to  determine  their  true  definition  ?  What  is 
genius  but  inspiration?  and  a  new  truth  bodied  forth  to  the 
world  but  a  revelation  ?  Were  it  not  possible  for  a  genius — 
an  inspired  man — to  trace  the  finger  of  God  in  the  sunset's 
splendor  as  easily  as  upon  tables  of  stone  ?  to  hear  the  voice 
of  Omnipotence  in  the  murmur  of  the  majestic  sea  as  well 
as  in  the  thunders  of  Sinai  ?  to  read  a  divine  message  of  un- 
dying love  in  a  mother's  lullaby  as  readily  as  in  the  death  and 
resurrection  of  a  Deity  ?  If  God  can  teach  the  very  insects 
wisdom  and  gift  even  the  oyster  with  instinct,  can  He  com- 
municate with  man  only  by  word  of  mouth  or  the  engraver's 
burin  ?  Examine  the  most  beautiful  woman  imaginable  with 
a  powerful  microscope  and  you  will  turn  from  her  with  a 
disgust  similar  to  that  of  Gulliver  when  the  Brobdingnagian 
maid  placed  him  astride  the  nipple  of  her  bosom.  Her  skin, 
so  fair  to  the  natural  eye  and  velvety  to  the  touch,  becomes 
beneath  the  microscope  suggestive  of  the  hide  of  a  hairless 
Mexican  dog.  Religion  is  a  beautiful,  an  enchanting  thing 
if  you  do  but  look  at  it  with  the  natural  eye ;  but  when  you 
employ  the  adventitious  aid  of  the  skeptic's  microscope  you 
find  flaws  enough.  It  were  doubtful  if  even  our  boasted 
American  Government,  of  which  you  are  so  proud,  could 
stand  such  an  examination  and  retain  your  confidence. 

No,  my  dear  Colonel ;  you  will  never  banish  worship  from 
the  world  by  warring  upon  non-essentials.  You  may  demon- 
strate that  every  recorded  miracle  is  a  myth — that  the  found- 
ers of  the  various  cults  were  but  mortal  men  and  the  writers 
of  every  sacred  book  but  scheming  priests.  You  may  make 
it  gross  to  sense  that  the  Creator  has  never  held  direct  com- 
munication with  the  creature,  and  you  have  but  stripped  re- 
ligion of  its  tattered  vestments — have  not  laid  the  weight  of 
your  hand  upon  the  impregnable  citadel,  the  universal  Fath- 
erhood of  God  and  Brotherhood  of  Man.  You  have  never 
yet  talked  to  the  real  question.  You  reject  religion  because 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  37 

Moses  and  Mahomet,  Luther  and  Calvin  entertained  crude 
ideas  of  the  plans  and  attributes  of  the  Creator.  You  pose 
as  an  agnostic — a  religious  Knownothing — because  the  Al- 
mighty has  not  taken  you  completely  into  his  confidence.  Be- 
cause the  blind  have  sometimes  led  the  blind  and  both  have 
fallen  into  the  foul  ditch  of  fanaticism  and  cruelty,  you  infer 
that  not  one  gleam  of  supernal  glory  has  pierced  the  dark 
vale  of  human  life.  While  posing  as  the  apostle  of  light,  you 
will  obscure  the  scintillations  of  the  stars  because  the  sun  is 
hid ;  while  apotheosizing  Happiness  you  would  banish  Hope, 
that  mother  of  which  it  is  born. 

But  your  labors  have  borne  good  as  well  as  evil  fruit. 
While  your  siren  eloquence  has  led  some  doubting  Thomases 
into  the  barren  desert  of  Atheism,  you  have  driven  others  to 
seek  a  better  reason  for  their  religious  faith  than  barbarous 
tradition  and  the  vote  of  ecumenical  councils.  Bigotry  has 
quailed  beneath  the  ringing  blows  of  your  iconoclastic  ham- 
mer, dogmatism  become  more  humble  and  the  priesthood 
well-nigh  forgotten  to  prate  of  a  hell  of  fire  in  which  the 
souls  of  unbaptized  babes  forever  burn.  Without  intending 
it,  perhaps,  you  have  done  more  to  promote  the  cause  of  true 
religion,  more  to  intellectualize  and  humanize  man's  concep- 
tion of  Almighty  God,  than  any  other  reformer  since  the 
days  of  Christ. 


FAITH  AND  FOLLY. 
"LET  Us  HAVE  PEACE." 

In  sixty  centuries  of  earnest  toil,  with  infinite  pain  and 
tearful  prayer,  what  knowledge  have  we  gained  of  God,  oh 
brother  mine,  that  we  should  quarrel  about  his  plans  or  at- 
tributes? As  yet  we  can  but  touch  the  hem  of  Divinity's 
robe ;  we  can  but  hear  His  voice  in  dreams  or  catch  in  fleeting 
visions  glimpses  of  His  glory. 

Why  quarrel  about  our  faiths,  and  declare  that  this  is  right 
or  that  is  wrong,  when  all  religions  are,  and  must  of  neces- 
sity ever  be,  fundamentally  one  and  the  same — the  worship 
of  a  Superior  Power,  the  great 

'Father  of  all,  in  every  age,  in  ev'ry  clime  adored, 
By  saint,  by  savage  and  by  sage,  Jehovah,  Jove,  or  Lord!" 

Cult  wars  with  cult,  and  sect  with  sect,  while  all  unite  to 
damn  the  independent  worshipper ;  yet  every  man  who  bows 
the  knee  or  breathes  a  prayer  to  any  God  of  whatsoever 


38  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST. 

name ;  every  Egyptian  bending  at  Isis'  fanes  and  every  Phe- 
nician  sacrificing  unto  Baal ;  every  Gueber  worshipping  his 
god  of  fire,  and  every  Catholic  following  the  sacred  cross ; 
every  Peruvian  adoring  the  rising  sun  and  every  Methodist 
agonizing  at  the  mourner's  bench,  is  a  member  of  the  same 
great  church.  They  may  accredit  their  God  with  different 
attributes  and  worship  him  in  diverse  ways ;  but  their  faiths, 
when  stripped  of  non-essentials,  are  one  and  the  same — their 
Deities  are  identical. 

Men  of  our  day,  who  from  the  dizzy  heights  of  modern 
learning,  hurl  their  logical  thunderbolts  at  Mahomet's  inco- 
herent mouthirigs  and  Moses'  solemn  confabs  with  the  Al- 
mighty anent  matters  of  no  possible  moment ;  who  sneer  at 
Guatama's  four-fold  path  to  a  Celestial  Nowhere  and  de- 
nounce the  worship  of  an  illiterate  carpenter  as  foolish  blas- 
phemy, forget  that  all  things  must  have  a  beginning — that 
e'en  proud  Science  sprang  from  the  womb  of  stupid  Igno- 
rance, and  stumbled,  awkwardly  enough,  through  long  ages 
of  Folly  before  she  could  firmly  plant  her  feet  upon  the  eter- 
nal rock  of  Fact. 

I  have  no  word  of  condemnation  for  any  religious  faith, 
however  fatuous  it  may  appear  to  me,  that  has  cast  one 
gleam  of  supernal  glory  into  the  dark  vale  of  human  life; 
but  I  regard  with  unspeakable  contempt  the  man  of  these 
modern  days  who  decries  all  religious  progress  and  brands 
as  blasphemers  those  who  would  take  one  step  beyond  the 
crude  faiths  of  former  days — insists  that  religion  is  too 
sacred  to  be  handled  by  human  reason,  that  mother  of  which 
it  was  born !  It  were  folly  to  expect  a  people  whose  wisest 
men  believed  this  world  the  centre  of  the  universe  and  the 
stars  mere  ornaments  of  the  night,  to  evolve  a  perfect  re- 
ligion, or  form  an  intelligent  conception  of  the  great  First 
Cause. 

The  Sacred  Books  of  all  the  centuries  are  essentially  the 
same — the  half  articulate  voice  of  the  world  crying  for  light, 
the  frantic  efforts  of  man  to  learn  whence  he  came  and 
whither  he  goes,  to  lift  the  veil  that  shrouds  the  two  eterni- 
ties— to  see  and  know!  I  gather  them  together — the  Old 
Testament  and  the  New,  the  Koran  and  the  sacred  Vedas, 
the  northern  Sagas  and  the  southern  Mythologies ;  I  search 
them  through,  not  to  scoff,  but  to  gather,  with  reverent  soul, 
every  gleam  of  light  that  since  the  birth  of  Time  has  been 
vouchsafed  to  man.  I  read  the  Revelations  and  ponder  the 
Prophecies ;  I  listen  once  again  to  the  voice  in  the  burning 
bush  and  the  mystic  whisperings  of  the  Dodona  Oak ;  I  de- 
scend into  the  Delphic  cave,  or  stand  with  uncovered  head 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  39 

to  hear  the  voice  of  Memnon  answer  to  the  rosy  ringers  of 
the  morn.  I  sit  with  Siddartha  beneath  the  Bodhi  tree  and 
follow  the  prophet  of  Islam  in  all  his  pilgrimings ;  I  stand 
with  Moses  on  Sinai's  flaming  crest  and  listen  to  the  prayer 
of  Christ  in  the  Garden  of  Gethsemane,  then  I  go  forth  be- 
neath the  eternal  stars — each  silently  pouring  its  stream  of 
sidereal  fire  into  the  great  realm  of  Darkness — and  they  seem 
like  the  eyes  of  pitying  angels,  watching  man  work  out,  little 
by  little,  thro'  the  long  ages,  the  mystery  of  his  life. 


THE  AGE  OF  CONSENT. 

Are  the  various  legislatures  of  this  alleged  land  of  Christ 
composed  chiefly  of  "chippy  chasers,"  of  lecherous  libertines 
eager  to  despoil  little  school-girls — of  unclean  creatures  who 
would  violate  the  very  cradle  to  feed  lust's  unholy  fires  ? 

No?  Then  why  is  it  they  persistently  decline  to  give  the 
little  girls  legal  protection  from  moral  destruction  ?  Why  is 
it  that  they  deliberately  disregard  public  opinion  and  turn  a 
deaf  ear  to  the  pleading  of  ten  thousand  mothers,  if  thev 
have  not  formed  "a  league  with  death  and  a  covenant  with 
hell?" 

I  will  be  told  that  our  law-builders,  like  Brutus  and  his 
brother  conspirators,  are  ''honorable  men."  Did  an  honor- 
able man  ever  yet  decline  to  protect  youth  and  innocence  to 
the  utmost  of  his  power  ? 

What  is  the  record  of  the  American  legislatures  anent  this 
important  matter  ?  Most  of  them  fixed  the  age  of  consent  at 
ten  years.  Think  of  it,  ye  men  with  daughters  completing 
their  first  decade !  The  men  chosen  by  popular  vote  to  make 
laws  for  a  people  boasting  of  their  enlightenment,  declared 
that  a  girl  scarce  old  enough  to  prepare  her  trundle-bed  or 
dress  her  dolls,  was  amply  qualified  to  pass  upon  the  most 
momentous  question  that  can  confront  her  between  the 
cradle  and  the  grave !  One  state  actually  fixed  seven  years 
as  the  age  at  which  a  girl  may  legally  "consent"  to  carnal  in- 
tercourse, her  ravisher,  tho'  a  full-grown  man,  not  being  lia- 
ble to  punishment  for  rape.  And  this  is  the  country  that  is 
building  laws  to  shield  from  desecration  the  "Christian  Sab- 
bath," sending  missionaries  to  the  antipodes  to  carry  prayer- 
books  and  Bibles  to  barbarians — tithing  itself  to  build  pala- 
tial churches  and  provide  legislative  bodies  with  perfunctory 
prayer ! 

God  of  Israel,  what  a  gall ! 


40  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

I  lay  it  down  as  an 'impregnable  proposition  that  the  men 
who  enacted  these  laws  were  knaves  or  they  were  fools. 
They  were  either  corrupt  to  the  heart's  core,  or  it  were  ful- 
some flattery  to  brand  them  as  burros.  If  fools  they  should 
have  been  caged,  if  knaves  they  should  have  been  hanged. 
Their  infamous  legislation  has  left  a  foul  blot  on  American 
civilization  which  centuries  cannot  erase.  When  the  anti- 
quarian of  the  future  finds  those  revolting  statutes  in  the 
ruins  of  our  marble  capitols  he  will  decline  to  dignify  us  by 
calling  us  barbarians — he  will  brand  us  brutes ! 

A  decade  ago  the  age  of  consent  in  England  was  thirteen 
years.  A  careful  investigation  resulted  in  the  disclosure  of 
crimes  against  children  that  appalled  the  civilized  world. 
Parliament  promptly  raised  to  sixteen  the  age  at  which  a  fe- 
male may  legally  part  with  that  priceless  jewel  of  her  soul, 
her  chastity.  Gladstone  insisted  on  eighteen  years,  but  was 
overruled  by  the  younger  members,  many  of  whom  had 
mistresses  under  that  age.  The  agitation  spread  to  Amer- 
ica, where  for  ten  years  the  ladies,  supported  by  public 
opinion,  the  pulpit  and  the  press,  have  attempted  to  secure 
legal  protection  for  their  little  daughters. 

In  twenty-nine  States  and  Territories  the  age  of  consent 
still  ranges  from  ten  to  fourteen  years.  A  few  States  have 
been  induced,  after  an  heroic  struggle,  to  raise  it  to  sixteen, 
even  eighteen,  years,  and,  now,  as  if  ashamed  of  this  conces- 
sion to  common  decency,  are  trying  to  reduce  it  again.  The 
Texas  legislature  did  finally  consent  a  few  years  ago  to  in- 
crease from  ten  to  twelve  the  age  at  which  a  babe  is  priv- 
ileged to  become  a  bawd ;  but  the  victory  cost  the  ladies  a  se- 
vere struggle.  The  matter  has  been  brought  forcibly  to  the 
attention  of  the  present  Legislature,  and  the  Senate  has  ac- 
tually succeeded — after  much  industrious  lobbying  by  the 
ladies — in  passing,  over  powerful  opposition,  a  bill  raising 
the  age  of  consent  to  fifteen  years ;  also  one  prohibiting  the 
sale  of  cigarettes  to  "children  under  sixteen !"  What  the  fate 
of  this  bill  in  the  House  will  be  I  do  not  at  this  writing  (Feb- 
ruary 12)  know ;  but  it  is  safe  to  say  the  most  potent,  grave 
and  reverend  jackasses — who  consider  cigarette  smoking  a 
crime  and  fornication  but  a  venial  fault — will  consent  to  no 
improvement. 

As  matters  now  stand  in  Texas  an  unmarried  woman  of 
twenty  cannot  legally  purchase  a  bottle  of  beer  or  sell  a  foot 
of  land.  At  seventeen  she  cannot  legally  contract  an  honor- 
able marriage  without  the  consent  of  parents  or  guardian ; 
she  is  an  infant  in  the  purview  of  the  law — for  every  pur- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  41 

pose  but  prostitution!  She  is  not  mistress  of  her  property 
until  twenty-one,  but  mistress  of  her  person  at  twelve ! 

I  lay  down  the  proposition  that  when  a  girl  is  old  enough 
to  be  entrusted  with  the  guardianship  of  her  virtue  she  is 
old  enough  to  contract  a  marriage  without  asking  permission 
of  any  one ;  that  when  she  is  old  enough  to  become  an  un- 
clean prostitute  she  is  old  enough  to  become  an  honorable 
wife — that  when  she  is  old  enough  to  dispose  of  her  person 
she's  old  enough  to  dispose  of  her  property. 

The  man  who  will  have  carnal  intercourse  with  a  child  un- 
der fourteen  years  of  age,  with  or  without  her  consent, 
should  be  burned  alive.  The  man  who  will  be  criminally  in- 
timate with  a  girl  under  seventeen  years  of  age  should  be 
castrated — then  shot.  Yet  all  the  American  States  but  three 
decline  to  consider  him  guilty  of  rape. 

In  Texas  the  child  of  twelve  is  placed  on  a  parity  with  the 
woman  of  forty,  so  far  as  sexual  intercourse  is  concerned. 
When  Congressman  Breckinridge  seduced  a  grown  woman, 
well  versed  in  the  ways  of  the  world,  millions  of  people  cried 
''Shame!"  Yet  his  offense  was  no  greater  in  the  eye  of  the 
law  than  tho'  he  had  coaxed  some  twelve-year-old  Texas 
child  with  a  box  of  bon-bons  to  submit  to  his  brutish  desires. 
When  a  middle-aged  married  woman  is  "led  astray"  we  de- 
nounce her  "destroyer"  as  worthy  of  death ;  yet  we  take 
precious  good  care  to  protect  with  the  law  the  life  of  the 
lecherous  brute  who  despoils  her  young  daughter. 

I  do  not  know  of  a  single  reason  why  the  age  of  consent 
should  not  be  at  least  seventeen  years  in  every  State  of  the 
Union ;  nor  can  I  understand  why  any  law-maker,  laying 
the  slightest  claim  to  respectability,  should  object  to  raising 
it  to  that  figure.  I  believe  that  if  the  question  were  submit- 
ted to  a  vote  of  the  very  bagnio  keepers  and  blacklegs  it 
would  carry  by  a  big  majority,  for  they  still  retain  some  re- 
spect for  pure  womanhood,  and  are  not  sunk  so  low  in  the 
scale  of  human  degradation  as  to  deny  legal  protection  to 
children.  I  can  understand  the  man  who  considers  that 
when  a  girl  has  reached  maturity  she  is  lawful  prey  for  who- 
soever can  despoil  her ;  I  cannot  understand  why  the  Legis- 
lature of  any  State  should  decline  to  protect  little  school-girls 
in  every  possible  manner,  unless  it  be  dominated  by  lecher- 
ous demons  more  utterly  depraved  than  those  that  inhabit 
the  amen-corner  of  hell. 


42  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 


JONAH'S  GOURD. 

Circumstances  over  which  he  seems  to  have  had  no  con- 
trol made  Jonah  the  prototype  of  the  modern  panic-builder ; 
facile  princeps  of  chronic  kickers,  the  high  priest  of  profes- 
sional calamity  howlers.  He  received  a  call  to  cry  against 
Nineveh  because  of  its  cussedness,  but  seems  to  have  had  a 
presentment  that  the  job  wouldn't  pay,  and  made  a  desperate 
attempt  to  jump  it.  We  are  not  advised  what  awful  wicked- 
ness the  city  planted  by  Ninus  and  watered  by  Sennacherib 
had  been  guilty  of.  Perhaps  a  Democratic  Congress  had  de- 
clined to  add  $500,000,000  to  the  interest-bearing  burden  of 
the  people  for  the  special  behoof  of  the  plutocracy.  The  peo- 
ple may  have  blasphemed  the  Golden  Calf,  declared  for  the 
money  of  the  constitution,  or  hinted  that  they  were  better  off 
when  wrestling  with  the  flesh-pots  of  Republicanism  than 
trailing  a  mugwump  king  across  barren  deserts  to  a  Baby- 
lonian captivity.  Or  they  may  have  neglected  to  give  the 
first  fruits  and  fat  of  the  land  to  the  Lord — via  the  larders  of 
the  Levites.  Certain  it  is  that  Nineveh  had  gotten  off  on  the 
wrong  foot,  and  Jonah  was  sent  to  "cry  against  it"  and  en- 
able jt  to  strike  the  proper  gait.  Like  all  the  Jews  of  his  gen- 
eration, Jonah  supposed  that  Jehovah  ruled  over  but  a  small 
territory — that  by  crossing  a  State  line  he  could  get  beyond 
his  jurisdiction  and  into  the  bailiwick  of  other  gods ;  so  he 
boarded  a  packet  plying  between  Joppa  and  Tarshish  and 
''fled  from  the  face  of  the  Lord."  It  did  not  occur  to  the 
good  man  that  Jehovah  might  have  an  extradition  treaty 
with  the  Tarshish  deity,  or  that  he  might  make  an  excursion 
into  foreign  territory  and  recapture  the  runaway  at  the  im- 
minent risk  of  precipitating  a  celestico-international  compli- 
cation. Jonah  probably  did  not  suppose  that  Jehovah  was 
cooped  up  in  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant  like  the  fisherman's 
genie  in  the  vessel  of  copper,  and  uncorked  only  when  the 
enemies  of  Israel  became  troublesome  or  some  new  people 
were  to  be  despoiled  of  their  corn  and  cattle,  their  vines  and 
virgins ;  still,  he  imagined,  like  many  people  of  the  present 
day,  that  the  Almighty  clung  pretty  close  to  the  amen-corner. 
But  before  the  patron  saint  of  amateur  fishermen  and  profes- 
sional falsifiers  could  get  clear  of  the  legal  three-mile  coast 
limit  of  Israel's  God,  that  potentate  pulled  down  on  him 
with  a  double-barreled  hurricane  and  a  muzzle-loading 
leviathan.  The  aim  was  true,  and  Jonah  tumbled.  When  he 
found  himself  in  the  belly  of  the  big  fish  our  peripatetic 
prophet  from  Galilee — which  appears  to  have  been  the 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  43 

ancient  Georgia — repented  of  his  sins.  We  all  do  when  they 
fail  to  pay  the  expected  dividends.  Jonah  decided  that  he 
would  rather  go  to  Nineveh  and  found  a  Cleveland  calamity 
club  than  travel,  a  perpetual  passenger,  in  the  prototype  of 
Jules  Verne's  Nautilus ;  so  he  offered  up  penitential  prayers, 
made  fair  promises  and  was  permitted  to  go  ashore. 

"The  Lord  spake  to  the  fish  and  it  vomited  Jonah  upon 
dry  land." 

Pictures  of  the  prophet  walking  ashore,  with  the  lower 
jaw  of  the  whale  for  gang-plank,  are  quite  plentiful ;  but  his 
remarks  on  that  occasion  have  not  been  preserved.  The 
kodak  fiend  seems  to  have  been  waiting  for  him,  but  the 
ubiquitous  interviewer  failed  to  get  in  his  graft.  Perhaps  it 
is  just  as  well ;  but  it  gives  us  a  poor  opinion  of  ancient  jour- 
nalism. During  the  three  days  and  nights  the  prophet  was  a 
cabin  passenger  his  whaleship  must  have  swallowed  a  vast 
variety  of  the  denizens  of  the  deep,  and  it  were  interesting 
to  know  if  Jonah  lived  happily  with  them,  and  if  they  came 
ashore  when  he  did,  or  continued  their  voyage.  Perhaps 
some  devout  defender  of  the  inerrancy  of  the  Bible  will  yet 
consent  to  be  swallowed  by  a  whale  for  a  few  days  in  order 
to  give  the  world  a  realistic  account  of  Jonah's  remarkable 
journey. 

But  although  our  hero  vigorously  objected  to  becoming 
a  calamity  howler  he  took  a  wonderful  interest  in  his  work 
when  he  once  got  into  harness.  He  was  only  commissioned 
to  conduct  a  camp-meeting  revival  in  Nineveh  and  rail 
against  its  moral  rottenness ;  but  he  determined  to  "bring  a 
corollary  rather  than  want  a  spirit,"  so  he  began  to  bawl  in 
the  streets. 

"Yet  forty  days  and  Nineveh  shall  be  overthrown." 

Such  a  calamity  cry  as  that,  coming  from  a  man  whom  we 
have  no  evidence  had  taken  a  bath  or  changed  his  shirt  since 
associating  with  the  whale,  was  enough  to  frighten  a  mar- 
ble caryatid  into  convulsions.  The  entire  population,  from 
the  King  on  his  throne  to  the  wingless  buzzard  who  wrote 
anonymous  communications  to  the  editor  of  the  Nineveh 
Morning  Bazoo,  informing  him  that  he  was  an  iridescent  ass, 
donned  their  sackcloth  suits,  sat  in  the  ashes  and  failed  to 
come  up  to  their  feed.  In  those  old  days  a  man  who  filled 
his  hair  with  hickory  ashes  and  boycotted  his  barber  and  his 
belly,  was  supposed  to  be  an  especially  agreeable  sight  to  the 
good  God ;  hence  we  can  hardly  wonder  that  he  promptly  re- 
pealed the  act  authorizing  the  free  coinage  of  calamities. 
Just  what  awful  punishment  would  have  been  inflicted  upon 
the  fair  city  had  the  people  refused  to  rend  their  garments 


44  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

and  run  their  noses  in  the  sand,  we  are  left  to  conjecture. 
The  Lord  might  have  sunk  it  beneath  a  sea  of  bitter  waters 
as  he  did  Sodom,  sent  the  seventeen-year  locusts,  or  saddled 
it  with  a  mugwump  administration.  But  the  God  of  the 
Jews  seems  to  have  ever  been  open  to  conviction.  That's 
where  he  differed  from  Grover  Cleveland.  The  Lord  even- 
tually pulled  his  prophet  of  evil  off  the  perch ;  but  Cleveland 
strives  manfully  to  fulfill  every  panic-breeding  prediction  of 
his  faithful  cuckoos. 

After  the  hot  wave  prognosticator  had  put  out  his  bulle- 
tins he  got  him  out  of  the  city,  so  as  not  to  slip  on  his  own 
banana  peel,  built  a  jackal  a  considerable  distance  from  the 
spot  where  his  curse  was  to  get  action,  and  deliberately  sat 
him  down  to  see  the  show.  He  expected  nothing  less  than 
the  utter  destruction  by  a  gracious  God  of  the  city  in  which 
were  60,000  infants — "also  much  cattle." 

The  summer  climate  of  Nineveh  was  almost  as  sultry  as 
that  of  St.  Louis  ;  and  as  Jonah  lay  in  his  hut  with  his  tongue 
hanging  out  the  Lord  took  pity  on  him  and  caused  a  gourd 
to  spring  up  to  comfort  him  with  its  shade.  There  Jonah 
lay,  day  after  day,  we  are  led  to  suppose,  looking  off  toward 
Nineveh,  eager  to  see  fire  and  brimstone  descend  from 
heaven  on  a  million  happy  homes — to  inhale  the  sweet  in- 
cense of  three  score  thousand  helpless  babes  burned  alive! 
On  the  morning  of  the  fortieth  day  we  may  well  suppose  that 
he  arose  bright  and  early.  This  is  the  day  that  is  to  prove 
him  a  true  prophet  and  assure  him  the  patronage  of  princes 
and  potentates,  or  proclaim  him  a  garrulous  old  guy  with  a 
disordered  liver  and  an  ill-balanced  head.  Either  Nineveh 
or  the  prophet  must  be  overthrown. 

Beyond  the  Tigris  the  heralds  of  the  sun  are  flaming  in 
the  sky.  Now  the  great  day-god  shows  his  shining  disc, 
lingers  a  moment  as  tho'  loth  to  leave  Aurora's  loving  arms, 
then  wheels  upward  in  stately  majesty  and  pours  his  golden 
splendors  full  upon  Assyria's  mighty  capital.  The  people 
awake  from  refreshing  slumber,  and  the  streets  resound  with 
the  same  drowsy  hum  that  for  a  thousand  years  has  been 
heard  in  that  ancient  centre  of  civilization.  The  merchant 
goes  about  his  business,  the  gude  house-wife  borrows  soap 
and  sad  irons  of  her  neighbor  and  gossips  with  her  over  the 
back  fence  about  the  new  priest  of  Baal;  the  King  and  his 
courtiers  go  forth  to  hunt  the  wild  boar  and  the  bride  be- 
decks herself  for  the  nuptial  rites.  Jonah  begins  to  fidget 
beneath  his  gourd  and  glances  often  upward,  wondering  if 
the  consignment  of  blazing  brimstone  has  been  side-tracked 
by  another  celestial  revolution,  such  as  that  of  which  Milton 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  45 

sings.  The  sun  sinks  like  a  globe  of  gold  into  the  plain  far 
beyond  the  Zab,  and  the  crescent  moon  is  trying  to  clasp 
Love's  brilliant  star  to  her  concave  breast.  The  ring  of  the 
hammer  and  the  shrill  cry  of  the  herdsmen  are  hushed,  and 
from  park  and  garden  come  peals  of  mirth  and  music,  the 
dreamy  cadence  of  dancing  feet  on  polished  cedar  floors,  and 
the  sensuous  perfume  of  dew-bespangled  flowers.  Pyramus 
is  bending  his  steps  to  old  Ninus'  lonely  tomb  to  meet  his 
lovely  Thisbe;  in  the  banquet  hall  the  golden  goblet  brims 
with  nectarous  wine  such  as  Samos  never  knew,  and  per- 
fumed lamps  cast  a  ruddy  glow  on  giant  warriors  and  women 
fair  as  ever  cast  in  mortal  mold.  The  hour  grows  late,  the 
music  ceases;  the  hum  dies  slowly  out,  and  the  midnight 
quiet  is  broken  only  by  the  prayer  of  an  ascetic  worshipping 
the  host  of  heaven,  and  the  yoop  of  an  unhappy  married  man 
going  home  from  the  primaries  in  charge  of  a  pair  of  police- 
men. Nineveh  is  going  to  bed  just  as  tho'  no  whale  had 
swallowed  Jonah — then  puked  him  up  when  it  discovered 
that  he  had  "a  call  to  preach/' 

When  Jonah  learned  that  the  show  for  which  he  was  act- 
ing as  press  agent  had  collapsed,  he  proceeded  to  file  a  vig- 
orous kick.  That  was  perfectly  natural.  No  matter  how 
terrible  a  prophet's  predictions  may  be,  he  earnestly  desires 
that  they  come  to  pass.  Jonah  had  shrieked  calamity  until 
his  tongue  was  parched,  yet  nothing  serious  had  happened. 
No  wonder  that  he  felt  that  his  star  was  evil — that  through 
no  fault  of  his  own  a  great  three-cornered  hiatus  had  been 
kicked  in  his  political  fences.  So  he  went  to  the  Lord,  we 
may  fairly  infer  from  the  trend  of  the  narrative,  and  said : 

"Look  here,  you've  busted  me  up  in  business.  I'd  a  been 
a  hanged  sight  better  off  had  I  taken  my  stand  squarely  on 
the  Chicago  platform  and  defended  the  money  of  the  con- 
stitution instead  of  joining  the  mugwumps  and  clamoring 
for  currency  contraction." 

The  Lord  said  unto  Jonah,  in  substance,  tho'  probably  not 
in  these  exact  words : 

"The  calamity  clacker,  like  the  cut-worm  and  the  cholera 
microbe,  hath  its  uses.  Here  was  Nineveh  growing  careless. 
It  had  been  prosperous  so  long  under  Republican  paganism 
that  it  was  losing  sight  of  the  eternal  principles  of  Jefferson- 
ian  Democracy.  The  old  town  had  become  deaf  to  argument 
and  indifferent  to  political  duty;  so  I  stirred  up  you  to  grow 
a  crop  of  anarchical  whiskers,  an  abnormal  gall,  and  spout 
calamity  from  the  beer-kegs  at  the  corners.  You  have 
served  my  purpose.  I  will  now  cut  down  your  gourd,  and 
you  must  sing  small  or  the  sun  will  shine  into  and  sour  you." 


46  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 


A  CARNIVAL  OF  CRIME. 

During  the  year  1894  there  were  about  9,800  homicides 
and  but  "132  legal  executions  reported  in  the  United  States. 
I  have  no  later  statistics  at  hand;  but  it  is  conceded,  I  be- 
lieve, that  crimes  of  this  kind  are  steadily  on  the  increase, 
while  the  disproportion  between  the  number  of  homicides 
and  hangings  continues  to  grow  greater.  As  matters  now 
stand,  one  might  slay  a  fellow  mortal  every  year  and  stand 
an  excellent  chance  of  dying  of  old  age,  so  far  as  the  courts 
are  concerned.  You  may  go  upon  the  streets,  insult  a  man, 
provoke  him  to  offer  you  violence,  shoot  him  down  like  a 
dog,  and,  if  able  to  employ  eminent  counsel  to  behedge  you 
with  legal  technicalities  and  befuddle  the  jury,  go  scot  free ; 
or  failing  in  that,  put  the  public  to  an  expense  of  several 
thousand  dollars  in  excess  of  what  your  cowardly  carcass  is 
worth,  and  escape  with  a  short  term  in  some  comfortable 
penitentiary,  where  you  will  be  well  cared  for,  taught  a  gfood 
trade  and  regularly  prayed  for  at  the  expense  of  law-abiding 
people.  What  is  the  result  ?  The  people,  despairing  of  legal 
protection  from  the  armed  thug,  take  the  law  into  their  own 
hands — invoke  the  power  of  Judge  Lynch  to  defend  their 
right  to  life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness.  There 
are  more  lynchings  than  legal  executions.  In  1894  the  first 
reached  the  appalling  number  of  190.  That  is  indeed  a  ter- 
rible record  of  lawless  violence,  but  it  were  idle  to  declaim 
against  the  effect  without  removing  the  cause.  The  Amer- 
ican people  are  naturally  law-abiding ;  but  above  and  beyond 
their  respect  for  courts  is  their  inherent  sense  of  justice — 
paramount  even  to  the  law  of  the  land  is  the  law  of  self-pres- 
ervation. Theorists  may  protest  and  sentimentalists  rend 
their  nether  garments  and  spill  their  ready  tears  ;  but  so  long 
as  the  assassin  is  white-washed  by  the  courts  and  the  rape- 
fiend  turned  loose  to  prey  upon  pure  homes,  Judge  Lynch 
will  continue  to  hold  his  midnight  sessions — the  shotgun 
will  continue  to  roar  in  the  hands  of  maddened  mobs  and 
the  lonely  tree  groan  beneath  its  grewsome  burden.  Is  it 
any  wonder  that  the  people  lose  patience  ?  In  Judge  Lynch's 
court  there  is  no  eminent  counsel  skilled  in  the  esoteric  art  of 
protecting  crime ;  no  change  of  venue ;  no  mistrials ;  no  ap- 
peals ;  no  postponements  to  give  important  witnesses  time  to 
die  or  get  away;  no  one-year  terms  in  the  penitentiary  for 
the  brutal  assassin  or  infamous  rape-fiend.  We  have  "re- 
formed" our  jurisprudence  until  the  contention  of  the  courts 
with  the  great  tide  of  crime  suggests  Dame  Partington's  un- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  47 

equal  combat  with  the  sea.  By  assiduously  trundling  her 
mop  she  was  able  to  fill  her  bucket  with  brine ;  and  by  labor- 
iously grinding,  the  courts  succeed  in  cramming  the  peniten- 
tiaries— with  small-fry  thieves  and  people  too  poor  to  employ 
skilled  counsel.  Our  courts  have  become  mere  circumlocu- 
tion offices,  winding  and  unwinding  red  tape,  instead  of  the 
sinewy  arm  of  justice  wielding  the  unerring  sword.  Our 
judges  are  usually  learned  and  upright,  our  juries  eager  to 
administer  justice,  our  officers  active  and  the  public  heart  in 
the  right  place ;  but  it  avails  not — our  system  is  all  wrong. 
We  make  too  many  laws,  then  involve  them  in  a  mass  of 
legal  verbiage  which  permits  a  skilled  sophist  to  demonstrate 
to  the  untrained  mind  that  they  mean  what  best  serves  the 
interest  of  his  client.  It  is  common  cant  that  "the  people 
make  the  laws."  They  do  not.  The  lawyers  make  them,  and 
that  with  the  full  understanding  that  the  more  intricate  the 
legal  machinery  may  be,  the  more  need  of  experts,  the  fatter 
the  harvest  of  fees.  All  the  criminal  laws  this  country  needs 
could  be  printed  in  a  pamphlet  no  larger  than  the  Iconoclast, 
together  with  full  instructions  for  their  enforcement;  made 
so  plain  that  the  most,  stupid  juror  could  understand  them — 
and  in  simplicity  there  is  strength.  "Thou  shalt  not  kill," 
says  the  Bible ;  and  the  sentence  stands  out  like  a  star.  The 
penalty  for  violation  of  this  law  was  death,  unless  it  plainly 
appeared  that  the  killing  was  accidental  or  done  in  self-de- 
fense. The  trial  was  immediate,  and,  if  conviction  followed, 
the  culprit  turned  over  to  the  "avenger  of  blood.'7  No  pro- 
vision for  experts  to  pass  upon  the  sanity  of  the  prisoner,  no 
prattle  of  hypnotism,  no  searching  of  the  community  for  the 
greatest  numbskulls  to  determine  the  case,  no  reversals  on 
legal  technicalities,  no  penitentiary  and  convict  labor  prob- 
lem— no  lawyers !  A  careful,  common  sense  inquirv,  hon- 
orable acquittal  or  conviction  and  immediate  execution.  The 
jury  constitutes  the  chief  feature  of  our  legal  machinery,  a 
feature  in  full  accord  with  our  theory  of  popular  sovereignty ; 
but  we  have  so  hedged  it  about  with  foolish  restrictions  that, 
instead  of  being  the  ancillary  of  Justice,  it  has  become  a  veri- 
table bulwark  of  Crime.  We  select  as  jurors,  not  those  who 
know  most  about  the  case,  but  those  who  know  least.  When 
an  atrocious  crime  is  committed  we  set  aside  as  unavailable 
those  who  have  kept  in  touch  with  current  events,  and  select 
a  jury  from  the  residue.  In  these  days  of  rapid  transit  and 
daily  papers  all  men  of  average  intelligence  are  soon  in- 
formed of  every  crime  of  consequence  committed  in  their 
county,  even  in  their  State ;  and  no  one  gifted  with  a  think- 
ing apparatus  can  avoid  arriving  at  some  conclusion  regard- 


48  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

ing  all  he  sees  and  hears.  As  a  rule,  we  get  together  twelve 
of  the  most  consummate  blockheads  in  the  county — a  dime 
museum  of  mental  freaks — permit  them  to  be  further  ob- 
fuscated by  artful  counsel,  whose  business  it  is  to  "make  out 
a  case"  for  or  against,  as  goes  the  fee,  then  lock  them  up 
until  the  most  obstinate  jackass  in  the  corral  dominates  the 
herd  or  compels  a  compromise.  Sometimes  there  are  two 
or  more  burros  of  equal  obstinacy ;  a  mistrial  results,  and  the 
case  goes  over  to  the  next  term  of  court.  The  public  loses 
interest  in  it — is  absorbed  in  the  contemplation  of  new  crimes 
— and  if  the  culprit  is  eventually  convicted  and  properly  pun- 
ished the  people  regard  it  as  a  special  dispensation  of  Provi- 
dence. Punishment,  to  have  a  repressive  effect,  must  be  not 
only  sure  but  swift.  The  law's  delay — coupled  with  its  un- 
certainty— encourages  crime.  More  than  five  years  ago,  and 
on  several  occasions  since  then,  the  Iconoclast  suggested  that 
jurors  be  elected  by  the  people  like  other  county  officers — 
that  every  county  select  nine  men  of  approved  worth  to  try 
criminal  cases,  and  establish  the  majority  rule.  This  would 
relieve  the  citizen  of  a  disagreeable  duty  for  which  he  is 
often  in  nowise  qualified,  and  insure  for  jury  service  men 
capable  of  analyzing  evidence  and  arriving  at  just  conclu- 
sions. Let  the  vote  of  the  jury  in  criminal  cases  be  made  a 
matter  of  public  record,  and  thereby  fix  the  responsibility 
for  every  miscarriage  of  justice.  Only  attorneys  employed 
by  the  State  should  be  permitted  to  appear  in  criminal  cases. 
These  should  be  skilled  lawyers,  but  in  no  sense  prosecuting 
attorneys,  intent  only  upon  securing  conviction  and  pocket- 
ing a  comfortable  fee.  Their  business  should  be  to  elicit 
facts  for  the  jury  to  pass  upon,  and  act  as  counsellors  to  the 
court  in  questions  of  law.  The  attorney  who  will,  with 
equal  readiness,  employ  his  skill  to  acquit  a  felon  or  hang  an 
innocent  man,  should  speedily  become  a  forgotten  factor  in 
our  criminal  jurisprudence.  In  March,  1895,  I  called  at- 
tention to  these  needed  reforms,  and  well-nigh  in  the  same 
words;  but  a  question  involving  the  lives  of  10,000  Amer- 
icans annually  cannot  be  too  frequently  called  to  the  atten- 
tion of  our  publicists  and  the  people. 


THE  APOSTLE'S  BIOGRAPHY. 

I  am  pleased  to  learn  from  some  of  my  contemporaries 
that  I  am  an  ex-convict,  who  tramped  into  Texas  carrying 
a  false  trade-mark ;  that  I  have  been  driven  out  of  several 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  49 

cities,  and  fired  by  various  managers  of  morning-  newspa- 
pers ;  that  I  have  been  thrashed  by  aged  cripples,  and  com- 
pelled to  make  retractions  in  the  public  prints.  That  is  by 
no  means  the  entire  catalogue  of  my  high  crimes  and  misde- 
meanors, as  set  forth  by  my  industrious  biographers;  but 
is  sufficient  to  show  that  as  an  original  sinner  neither  St. 
Paul  nor  Sam  Jones  was  a  circumstance  to  myself.  To  be- 
come chief  of  the  rogues  in  this  era  of  rampant  rascality 
were  indeed  a  distinction ;  but  being  a  modest  man,  I  shall 
refrain  from  assuming  the  post  of  honor  in  the  nether  pan- 
theon until  my  right  thereto  is  fully  established. 

My  biographers1  are  sadly  derelict  in  their  duty,  or  they 
would  have  discovered  my  pre-Texas  cognomen  and  the 
location  of  the  prison  in  which  I  clanked  my  chain.  The 
cities  from  which  I  was  expelled  should  be  marked  on  the 
map,  and  sworn  statements  by  reputable  citizens  anent  these 
interesting  episodes  made  matters  of  record.  The  affidavits 
of  publishers  who  have  willingly  dispensed  with  my  services, 
would  give  to  the  work  an  historical  accuracy  calculated  to 
impress  the  public.  Photographs  of  all  the  aged  cripples 
who  have  walked  my  log  should  illume  the  book,  while  a  fac- 
simile of  some  retraction  I  have  printed  would  make  an  ap- 
propriate frontispiece. 

From  the  foundation  of  the  world  the  falsehood  has  been 
the  defensive  weapon  of  the  fool.  Assail  him  with  logic  and 
he  answers  with  lies ;  lash  him  with  sarcasm  and  he  retorts 
with  calumny ;  impale  him  on  the  rapier  of  ridicule  and  he 
deluges  you  with  brutal  defamation. 

While  it  is  true  that  no  creature  rising  to  the  moral  level 
of  the  mangy  coyote,  the  intellectual  altitude  of  an  aceph- 
alous louse,  will  utter  a  malicious  lie,  it  is  likewise  true  that 
no  one  within  whose  heart  there  pulses  one  drop  of  gentle 
blood;  within  whose  brain  there  was  ever  born  a  noble 
thought;  within  whose  soul  there  is  enshrined  the  instincts 
of  a  manly  man,  will  retail  a  story  calculated  to  injure  a 
fellow  craftsman — even  if  he  knows  it  to  be  true.  The  re- 
spectable journalist,  the  well-bred  gentleman,  is  ever  ready 
to  break  a  lance  in  intellectual  tourney — to  prove  his  powers 
on  the  Field  of  the  Cloth  of  Gold — but  he  leaves  the  throw- 
ing of  stink-pots  to  Chinamen,  the  exploitation  of  night-soil 
to  scavengers,  the  peddling  of  stale  falsehoods  to  fools,  the 
concocting  of  unclean  calumnies  to  cowards. 


50  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

BLUE  AND  GRAY. 
AN  ADDRESS  TO  TH£  OLD  VETERANS. 

[The  following  summary  of  Mr.  Brann's  address  to  the  United 
American  Veterans,  San  Antonio,  Feb.  22,  1894,  is  published  by 
request.] 

It  occurs  to  me  that  the  time  is  not  an  appropriate  one 
for  lengthy  speeches.  This  is  a  love- feast,  and  I  have  noticed 
that  when  people  are  much  in  love  they  are  little  inclined  to 
talk.  Perhaps  I  have  been  called  upon  because  I'm  a  pro- 
fessional peacemaker,  an  expert  harmony  promoter.  Were 
I  not  as  meek  as  Moses  and  patient  as  Job  I  certainly  would 
weary  in  well-doing — become  discouraged  and  give  o'er  the 
attempt  to  inaugurate  an  era  of  universal  peace  and  general 
good  will ;  for  when  I  go  North  I  am  denounced  by  the  par- 
tisan press  as  an  unreconstructed  rebel  seeking  to  rip  the 
federal  government  up  by  the  roots,  and  when  I  come  South 
I'm  pointed  out  as  a  dangerous  Yankee  importation  with  the 
bluest  of  equators.  The  Democrats  insist  that  I'm  a  Repub- 
lican, but  that  party  declines  the  responsibility;  the  infidels 
call  me  a  religious  crank,  the  clergy  an  Atheist,  and  even 
the  Mugwumps  regard  me  with  suspicion.  But  let  me  tell 
you  right  here  that  whatever  I  may  or  may  not  be,  I  am  an 
American  from  the  ground  up — from  Alpha  to  Omega, 
world-without-end.  I  may  be  a  man  without  a  party  and 
without  a  creed;  but  so  long  as  Old  Glory  blazes  in  God's 
blue  firmament  I  will  never  be  a  man  without  a  country. 

I  can  no  more  imagine  a  man  loving  only  the  north  or 
south  half  of  his  country  than  I  can  imagine  him  loving 
only  the  right  or  left  side  of  his  wife.  If  I  had  to  love  my 
country  on  the  instalment  plan  I'd  move  out  of  it.  The 
man  who  is  really  a  patriot  loves  his  country  in  a  lump. 
There's  room  in  his  heart  for  every  acre  of  its  sunny  soil, 
its  every  hill  upon  which  the  morning  breaks,  its  every  vale 
that  cradles  the  evening  shadows,  its  every  stream  that 
laughs  back  the  image  of  the  sun. 

When  a  man  feels  that  way  you  can  safely  trust  him  with 
an  office — and  most  of  us  are  perfectly  willing  to  be  trusted. 

As  an  American  citizen  I  am  proud  of  every  man,  of 
whatever  section,  who,  by  the  nobility  of  his  nature  or  the 
majesty  of  his  intellect,  has  added  one  jot  or  tittle  to  the 
fame  of  his  fair  land,  has  increased  the  credit  of  our  com- 
mon country,  has  contributed  new  power  to  the  car  of  human 
progress.  They  are  my  countrymen,  friends  and  brethren. 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  51 

Are  you  of  the  North?  Then  T  claim  with  you  a  joint  in- 
terest in  your  entire  galaxy  of  intellectual  gods.  At  the 
shrine  of  Lincoln's  broad  humanity,  of  Webster's  matchless 
power,  of  the  cunning  genius  of  your  Menlo  wizard  I  humbly 
bow.  Are  you  of  the  South?  Your  Jefferson,  Jackson  and 
Lee  are  mine  as  well  as  thine,  for  they  too  were  Americans 
— lords  in  that  mighty  aristocracy  of  intellect  that  has,  in 
four  generations,  made  the  New  World  the  wonder  of  the 
Old  writh  its  cumulative  greatness  of  forty  centuries. 

I  have  watched  the  progress  of  the  United  American  Vet- 
erans' Association  with  uncommon  interest,  because  it  is  dis- 
tinctively a  national  organization,  in  which  shriveled  section- 
alism and  party  prejudice  find  no  place.  Its  cornerstone  is 
American  manhood,  its  object  fraternity,  its  principles  broad 
as  the  continent  upon  which  falls  the  shadow  of  our  flag. 
Do  you  know  what  that  association  means  ?^had  you 
thought  of  its  significance  ?  It  means  that  when  brave  men 
sheathe  the  sword  the  quarrel's  done.  It  means  that  peace 
hath  its  triumphs  no  less  than  war.  The  world's  annals  fur- 
nish forth  no  parallel  to  that  association  whose  guests  we 
are  to-night.  Men  have  fought  ere  this  and  patched  up  a 
peace;  but  where,  in  all  the  cycles  of  human  history,  have 
they  waged  war  more  relentless  than  did  Rome  and  Carth- 
age, then,  without  a  murmur,  accepted  the  arbitrament  of 
the  sword  and  swung  into  line,  shoulder  to  shoulder,  a  band 
of  brothers,  one  flag,  one  country,  one  destiny  and  that  the 
highest  goal  of  human  endeavor? 

My  attention  has  been  especially  attracted  to  this  asso- 
ciation because  it  is  a  practical  illustration  of  what  I  have 
so  often  urged  in  print:  That  the  pitiful  sectional  preju- 
dices which  we  see  here  and  there  coming  to  the  surface 
both  north  and  south ;  that  the  petty  hatreds,  which  appear 
to  transform  some  hearts  into  bitter  little  pools  in  which 
Justice  perishes  and  divine  Reason  is  quite  overthrown,  have 
no  lot  or  part  among  the  soldiers  who  made  the  civil  war 
the  grandest  event  in  modern  history — one  from  which  the 
world  will  mark  time  for  centuries  yet  to  be.  I  have  yet  to 
hear  an  ex-federal  who  met  Lee's  veterans  at  the  Wilderness 
or  Gettysburg,  speak  disrespectfully  of  the  man  who  wore 
the  gray.  I  have  yet  to  hear  an  ex-confederate  who  mixed 
it  with  ""Old  Pap"' Thomas  at  Chickamauga,  or  Joe  Hooker 
above  the  clouds,  speak  disparagingly  of  those  who  wore  the 
blue.  It  is  those  who  stayed  at  home  to  sing,  "We'll  hang  Jeff 
Davis  on  a  sour  apple  tree,"  and  those  who  damned  "Old 
Abe"  Lincoln  at  long  range  who  are  doing  all  the  tremendous 
fighting  now.  They  didn't  get  started  for  the  front  until 


52  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

after  Appomattox;  but  having  once  sailed  in  for  slaughter 
all  Hades  can't  head  'em  off!  If  a  merciful  Providence 
doesn't  soon  interpose,  these  mighty  post-bellum  warriors 
will  either  break  a  lung  or  wreck  the  majestic  world.  They 
are  more  dreadful  in  their  destructive  awfulness  than  the 
farmer's  two  he-goats,  that  "fit  an'  fit"  until  there  was  noth- 
ing left  of  'em  but  a  splotch  o'  blood  and  two  belligerent 
tails.  Those  who  exchanged  compliments  at  Corinth  and 
Cold  Harbor;  those  who  received  informal  calls  from  Kil- 
patrick's  cavalry,  who  we  are  told  "rode  like  centaurs  and 
fought  like  devils";  those  who  saw  Grant's  intrepid  West- 
erners hurl  themselves  against  Vicksburg's  impregnable 
heights ;  those  who  were  slammed  up  against  Jackson's 
"Stone  wall"  or  picnicked  with  Johnston's  cartridge-biters  on 
grapeshot  pie  and  deviled  minnie  balls,  now  treat  each  other 
with  the  studied  respect  which  the  Kansas  farmer  paid  the 
cyclone.  He  felt  sure  that  the  Lord  was  on  his  side  and 
that  with  such  help  he  could  more  than  hold  his  own;  still 
he  was  in  no  wise  anxious  to  steer  his  theory  against  a  con- 
dition that  was  making  a  million  revolutions  a  minute  and 
hadn't  yet  brought  up  its  reserves. 

In  commingling  thus  in  a  common  brotherhood,  those 
who  followed  the  fortunes  of  the  confederacy  until  human 
fortitude  could  no  further  go,  and  those  who,  with  the 
sword's  keen  point,  held  every  gleaming  star  in  Old  Glory's 
field  of  blue,  are  furnishing  a  commendable  example  to  all 
our  countrymen,  to  all  humanity.  It  is  an  echo,  nay,  an  in- 
carnation of  those  words  of  Grant,  the  grandest  that  ever 
fell  from  victorious  warrior's  lips:  "Let  us  have  peace." 
The  battlefield  was  sown  long  since  with  kindlier  seed  than 
dragon's  teeth,  has  blossomed  and  borne  the  fruits  of  Life 
where  Death  reigned  paramount.  The  flowers  of  our 
Southern  fields  are  no  longer  dyed  with  the  blood  of  the 
contending  brave,  but  drip  with  heaven's  own  dews;  the 
sullen  battery  has  gone  silent  on  our  purple  hills  and  the 
crash  of  steel  resounds  no  more  amid  our  pleasant  valleys. 
No  longer  the  Northern  child  waits  and  watches  for  the 
soldier  sire  whose  lips  have  felt  the  touch  of  God's  own 
hand ;  no  longer  the  Southern  woman  wanders  with  burst- 
ing heart  amid  the  wreck  and  wraith  of  the  fierce  simoon, 
brushing  the  battle  grime  from  cold  brows,  seeking  among 
the  mangled  dead  for  all  that  life  held  dear.  The  curse  has 
passed :  "Let  us  have  peace." 

The  civil  war  was  a  national  necessity.  It  was  the  fiery 
furnace  in  which  Almighty  God  welded  the  discordant  ele- 
ments of  the  New  World  into  one  homogeneous  people. 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  53 

For  generations  the  Puritan  hated  the  Cavalier,  and  the  lat- 
ter gave  back  scorn  for  scorn  and  added  compound  interest. 
This  mutual  dislike  was  a  rank,  infectious  weed  that  first 
took  root  across  the  sea  and  ripened  into  that  revolution 
which  sent  Charles  the  First  to  the  block  and  invested  Crom- 
well with  more  than  regal  power.  Some  of  this  virus,  dis- 
tilled in  stubborn  hearts  by  religious  and  political  intolerance, 
was  carried  by  the  Puritan  to  Plymouth  and  by  the  Cavalier 
to  the  banks  of  the  James,  and  it  survived  even  the  fires  of 
patriotism  and  the  frosts  of  Valley  Forge.  Bone  of  the  same 
bone  and  flesh  of  the  same  flesh,  the  religio-political  doctrin- 
aires had  succeeded  in  casting  our  forefathers  in  different 
molds — each  colossal,  masculine,  heroic,  but  radically  anta- 
gonistic. Together  they  followed  Washington  through  those 
eight  long  years  of  blood  and  tears  of  which  human  liberty 
was  born.  Together  they  laid  broad  and  deep  the  founda- 
tion of  the  Republic  and  reared  thereon  that  wondrous  su- 
perstructure which — please  God — shall  endure  forever,  and 
together  they  poured  their  blood  in  one  unstinted  tide  upon 
its  sacred  shrine.  But  the  Puritan  was  still  a  Cromwell  and 
the  Cavalier  a  lord.  That  people  so  widely  divergent  in 
customs  and  character  could  long  dwell  at  peace  as  one 
political  household  were  preposterous.  The  one  had  his 
"convictions,"  the  other  his  ''institutions,"  and  neither  would 
yield  the  right-o'-way.  When  such  opposing  trains  of 
thought  try  to  pass  on  a  single  track  there's  going  to  be 
trouble  sure.  The  friction,  evident  even  in  the  early  days 
of  the  Republic,  grew  and  gathered  fire  until  the  nation 
burst  forth  in  that  mighty  conflagration  whose  pathetic 
ashes  repose  in  a  million  sepulchers.  It  had  to  come.  Let 
us  thank  God  that  the  fierce  baptism  of  fire  is  in  the  past 
and  not  yet  to  be ;  that  the  bitter  cup  can  never  be  pressed 
to  our  children's  lips ;  that  never  again  while  the  world 
stands  and  the  heavens  endure  will  Americans  meet  in  bat- 
tle-shock ;  that  never  again  will  our  rivers  run  red  with  the 
blood  of  Columbia's  brave,  poured  forth  by  her  own  keen 
blade— that  the  last  stumbling-block  hath  been  removed  from 
our  path  of  progress ;  that  we  can  now  move  forward  with 
a  giant's  stride  to  that  high  destiny  for  which  the  chastening 
hand  of  God  hath  fitted  us,  the  greatest  nation  and  the 
grandest  people  in  all  the  mighty  tide  of  Time ! 

I  rejoice  to  see  the  veterans  setting  the  example  of  recon- 
ciliation, for  they,  more  than  all  others,  have  most  to  forgive 
and  forget.  I  am  doubly  gratified  that  the  good  work  should 
have  begun  in  Texas,  which  has  such  cause  to  entertain 
the  kindliest  feelings  toward  every  section  of  our  common 


54  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

country,  for  each  and  all  contributed  to  her  past  glory  and 
present  greatness.  Among  those  who  cast  their  lot  in  Texas 
when  every  step  was  a  challenge  to  destiny  and  every  hour 
was  darkened  by  a  danger;  who  faced  unflinchingly  the 
trials  of  frontier  life  and  carved  out  an  independent  republic 
with  the  sword,  were  men  from  every  State  of  the  Amer- 
ican union.  One  instance  will  suffice  (though  scores  might 
be  cited)  to  illustrate  the  cosmopolitan  character  of  that 
band  of  heroes  who  made  the  early  history  of  Texas  one 
of  the  noblest  cantos  in  the  mighty  Anglo-Saxon  epic.  The 
New  Orleans  Grays  was  the  first  military  company  to  come 
from  the  States  to  the  aid  of  the  struggling  Texans.  It 
got  its  first  baptism  of  fire  in  this  city,  being  a  part  of  that 
band  of  300  Spartans  who  followed  Old  Ben  Milam  to  at- 
tack General  Cos  and  his  1,500  veterans.  From  the  roster 
of  the  Grays  I  learn  that  the  company  numbered  but  sixty- 
four  men,  yet  represented  sixteen  sovereign  States  and  six 
foreign  countries !  Think  of  it !  Twenty-five  came  from 
north  of  the  Ohio,  twenty-four  from  the  Southern  States, 
fourteen  across  far  seas  to  fight  for  Texas  liberty,  while  one 
brave  lad  came  from  God  knows  where,  but  he  got  there 
iust  the  same !  General  Cos  never  inquired  where  Milam's 
men  were  born.  He  knew  where  his  own  were  dying,  de- 
cided that  San  Antonio  had  been  overrated  as  a  health  re- 
sort and  took  to  the  chaparral. 

As  most  of  those  daring  spirits  who  flocked  hither  to  fight 
for  Texas  remained,  and  ever  since  a  steady  human  tide  has 
poured  in  from  all  parts  of  the  Union,  and  every  country 
of  Western  Europe,  we  have  become  a  mixed  people,  scarce 
daring  to  throw  a  rock  in  any  direction  lest  we  hit  our  rela- 
tives. And  the  cosmopolitan  character  of  our  people — the 
fact  that  the  Puritan  and  the  Cavalier  have  blended  here  as 
nowhere  else — will  be  found  a  powerful  factor  in  the  attain- 
ment of  a  glorious  future. 

It  is  particularly  appropriate  that  the  Blue  and  the  Gray 
should  unite  in  observing  the  day  that  marks  the  birth  of 
Washington,  that  soldier-statesman  who  marshaled  our 
fathers  under  one  flag  and  led  them  forth  to  the  defense  of 
human  liberty.  Whatever  may  have  since  mischanced,  the 
trials  and  the  triumphs  of  the  Revolution  are  our  common 
heritage.  As  the  Greeks  of  old,  divided  among  themselves, 
united  to  face  a  foreign  foe,  so  did  the  Americans,  North 
and  South,  unite  beneath  the  banner  of  Washington  and  hurl 
down  the  gage  of  battle  to  Britain's  mighty  power,  and  no 
historian  has  yet  presumed  to  say  which  was  the  better  sol- 
dier. Washington  belongs  to  no  section.  He  was  truly  an 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  55 

American,  pre-eminently  a  patriot.  The  nobility  of  his 
character  was  his  very  own ;  the  dazzling  splendor  of  his  un- 
dying fame  is  the  brightest  jewel  in  Columbia's  crown  of 
glory,  for  it  was  born  of  the  dauntless  valor  and  nurtured 
with  the  priceless  blood  of  a  people  whom  kings  could  not 
conquer  nor  sophists  deceive. 

A  husband  and  wife,  long  estranged,  met  at  the  grave  of 
their  firstborn,  the  child  of  their  youthful  strength.  Their 
strife  had  been  bitter,  their  love  had  turned  to  hate,  and 
they  elected  to  tread  life's  path  apart.  They  stood,  one  on 
either  side,  and  looked  coldly  upon  each  other.  Then  they 
looked  down  upon  the  little  mound  that  held  the  broken  link 
with  which  God  had  bound  their  hearts.  They  knelt  and 
bowed  their  faces  upon  the  cold  sod  that  covered  the  sacred 
dust  of  their  dead.  They  stretched  forth  their  hands  across 
the  little  grave,  each  to  the  other,  and  the  Angel  of  God 
washed  all  the  bitterness  of  the  years  from  their  hearts  with 
a  rain  of  penitential  tears,  and  sent  them  down  life's  path- 
way hand-in-hand,  as  in  the  old  days  when  Love  was  lord 
of  their  two  lives  and  the  lost  babe  was  cradled  upon  its 
mother's  breast. 

This  day  the  North  and  the  South  kneel  at  the  grave  of 
Washington,  their  best  beloved.  The  estrangement  is  for- 
gotten, the  bitterness  of  the  years  passes  like  an  uneasy 
dream,  they  reach  their  hands  each  to  the  other  across  the 
tomb,  and  the  benediction  of  God  falls  upon  a  reunited  peo- 
ple. 


A  MAID'S  MISTAKE. 
A  DEFENSE  OF  THE  BEAUTEOUS  REBECCA. 

The  King  of  Corea  is  anxious  to  found  a  harem,  and  it  is 
hinted  that  he  has  dispatched  agents  to  Houston  to  see  if 
Miss  Rebecca  Merlindy  Johnson,  of  the  Post,  is  really  so 
pretty  as  report  hath  painted  her. — Waco  News. 

Ye  gods!  has  American  journalism  come  to  this?  O 
tempora !  O  mores  !  Oh,  mamma !  How  can  our  represen- 
tative dailies  deliberately  mock  the  misfortunes  of  a  fair 
young  maid,  simply  to  make  a  hoodlum  holiday?  Rebecca 
may  have  erred ;  but  can  she  be  reformed  by  drawing  a  rat- 
tail  file  across  her  milk-white  teeth  and  coupling  her  name 
in  brutal  jest  with  that  of  a  barbaric  Mongol,  who  wears 
his  eyes  cut  bias  and  the  narrative  of  his  nether  garments 
floating  wide  upon  the  wandering  air?  True  it  is  that  Re- 


56  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

becca's  unhappy  custom  of  donning  male  attire  and  posing 
as  a  man,  at  press  conventions  and  on  the  public  streets,  is 
a  great  temptation  to  the  sacrilegious  paragraphers  to  let 
slip  the  biting  epigram  and  ribald  jest;  but  they  should  re- 
member that  while  Rebecca  is  beautiful  as  a  spotted  pup 
she  was  never  bright,  and  pass  her  little  idiosyncrasies  over 
in  silence. 

Although  Rebecca  has  gone  astray  the  Iconoclast  feels 
for  her  only  the  profoundest  pity,  and  it  will  permit  no  one 
to  make  her  a  target  for  the  chilly  sneer  or  heap  upon  her 
humbled  head  great  wads  of  withering  scorn.  Dear !  dear ! 
how  sad  it  seems  that  one  so  young  should  feel  the  heavy 
hand  of  unkind  fate — Hope's  fair  morning  overcast  with  the 
dun  clouds  of  grim  despair !  How  pitiful  that  the  bright 
dream  of  a  young  life  should  be  dispelled,  the  cloud-capped 
temple  of  Love,  in  which  she  expected  to  wander  ever,  but 
a  frightful  Fata  Morgana — the  golden  Apples  of  Hesperi- 
des  for  which  in  holy  faith  and  trust  she  held  out  her  blue- 
veined  hand,  turned  to  bitter  Dead  Sea  fruit !  Alas !  The 
great  heart  of  the  Iconoclast  bleeds  for  Houston's  unfortu- 
nate belle,  once  so  imperial  in  her  pride,  now  brought  so 
low  that  the  very  dogs  will  no  longer  pause  in  front  of  her 
office,  despite  the  seductive  sign,  "Houston  Post."  How 
often,  oh  how  often,  as  her  sad  romance  came  rushing  thro' 
our  mind  like  an  unhappy  ghost  shrieking  and  sobbing 
thro'  Fancy's  incorporeal  halls,  have  we  put  aside  our  goose- 
quill  pen  and  corncob  pipe  and  retired  to  the  dim  seclusion 
of  the  woodshed  to  uncork  by  stealth  the  briny  tear  and  tie 
loose  the  melancholy  moan.  It  may  be  unmanly,  but  we 
always  feel  better,  nobler,  purer  afterwards — better  qualified 
to  instruct  the  legislature  and  lead  the  State  out  of  its  finan- 
cial follies. 

Born  beneath  the  sometimes  sunny  skies  of  the  great 
Goober  State,  of  poor  but  honest  parents,  Rebecca  grew  up, 
neglected  but  beautiful,  soulful,  an  impulsive  child  of  na- 
ture. A  liberal  diet  of  'possum,  peanuts  and  corn  pone,  en- 
couraged in  its  onward  course  by  gourds  of  buttermilk  and 
an  occasional  nip  from  a  moonlight  still,  rapidly  rounded 
out  the  lissom  form,  and  running  barefoot  over  the  red  hills 
in  joyous  sport  with  the  young  coons,  gave  to  her  a  majestic 
carriage  which  Juno  might  have  envied.  Thus  the  happy 
years  sped  on,  as  years  are  wont  to  do,  until  the  heroine  of 
this  thrilling  novelette  had  reached  the  age  of  consent,  when 
many  a  young  gallant  awooirig  came  and  sought  to  toll  the 
matchless  beauty  forth  to  candy  pullings,  singin'  skules,  log 
rollings  and  other  hilarious  gatherings  where  the  youth 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  57 

and  beauty  of  back  districts  meet,  to  slobber  over  each  other, 
or  chase  the  glowing  hours  with  flying  feet. 

But  Rebecca  was  ambitious  and  scorned  the.  clumsy  ad- 
vances of  the  wool-hat  boys.  She  yearned  for  the  glory  of 
fame  and  the  glamour  of  wealth.  Her  soul  mounted  above 
such  plebeian  occupations  as  boiling  soft-soap,  deodorizing 
diapers  and  building  crackling  bread.  Poor  child!  She 
could  not  understand  as  yet  that  the  hand  that  wields  the 
slipper  is  the  hand  that  rocks  the  world;  hence  she  turned 
her  back  upon  domestic  joys  and  sought  fame  and  fortune 
on  the  mimic  stage — played  Pauline  in  Claude  Melnotte 
with  such  effect  that  soon  she  wore  as  cestus  a  string  of 
bleeding  hearts.  Pity  that  she  failed  to  heed  the  solemn 
warning  so  often  given. 

"Pauline,  thro'  pride  angels  have  fallen  ere  thy  time." 

Rebecca's  triumph  on  the  stage  but  fired  her  fond  ambi- 
tion for  loftier  flights.  She  was  no  longer  content  to  par- 
rot the  words  of  others,  but  would  write — would  dally  with 
the  delusive  pen,  weapon  more  powerful  than  the  sword. 
The  sock  and  buskin  were  exchanged  for  the  gilded  sanc- 
tum, and  here  the  proud  beauty  and  the  "Apostle"  met. 
The  queen  of  the  stage,  who  had  resisted  the  temptations  of 
the  green-room  and  the  seductive  rhythm  of  Cracker  poet- 
ry, surrendered  at  discretion,  and  entered,  with  all  the  ardor 
of  a  woman  whose  charms  are  waning,  upon  that  intoxicating 
yet  dangerous  dream  of  bliss  that — oh  lackaday! — was  too 
sweet  to  last. 

While  Menelaus  was  far  from  home,  assiduously  hustling 
the  wherewithal  to  discharge  the  family  butcher  bills,  old 
Priam's  roving  son  did  steal  away  the  matchless  Helen — 
and  history  repeats  itself.  While  the  "Apostle"  was  absent 
— trying  to  enforce  the  Sunday  law  in  San  Antonio  and 
cording  up  shekels  wherewith  to  purchase  a  gilded  cage 
for  his  bright  Bird  o'  Paradise — Epictetus  Paregoric  Hill 
did  abstract  from  him  the  fond  affections  of  the  fair  Re- 
becca. Nor  was  this  all.  Paregoric  proceeded  to  uncork 
himself  in  the  columns  of  the  Houston  Post  and  add  insult 
to  injury.  He  cried  aloud  unto  the  powers  that  be  to  tie 
the  saintly  "Apostle"  up  and  spread  upon  his  shrinking 
diaphragm  nine-and-thirty  cruel  lashes,  for  no  other  crime 
than  that  he  had  loved,  not  wisely  but  too  well.  As  Pare- 
goric's fierce  appeal  was  pigeon-holed,  perhaps  he'll  yet  con- 
clude to  tackle  the  job  himself — will  lift  the  "Apostle's'" 
cuticule  and  make  thereof  a  silken  purse  for  his  old  sweet- 
heart. 


58  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

But  we  bear  Epictetns  Paregoric  no  shade  of  malice.  He 
could  not  help  loving  Rebecca.  If  he  will  but  deal  honestly 
by  her  all  will  be  forgiven.  Whether  he  has  done  so  thus 
far  we  do  not  know ;  but  the  poor  girl's  sad  demeanor  and 
the  fact  that  she  has  been  an  inmate  of  an  asylum  for  the 
erring,  leads  us  to  fear  the  worst.  Her  conscience  is  evi- 
dently hurting  her,  and  day  by  day  that  exuberant  gladness, 
that  was  once  her  glory,  is  departing,  leaving  her  moody  and 
abstracted  as  the  man  who  fails  to  keno.  It  is  possible  that 
she  regrets  the  days  that  are  no  more?  That  in  the  stilly 
night  she  dreams  of  the  "Apostle"  and  smiles  again — thinks 
him  still  at  the  old  desk,  grinding  out  editorial  copy,  for 
which  she  cheerfully  takes  the  credit?  When  she  wakes 
and  finds  it  all  a  dream,  does  she  wish  that  she  had  awaited 
his  return,  even  as  Penelope  waited  for  Ulysses,  instead  of 
playing  Annie  to  his  Enoch  Arden  and  tying  fast  to  a  pink- 
haired  plug  whom  God  in  his  inscrutable  wisdom  has  per- 
mitted to  accumulate  a  little  wealth,  while  brainier  men  are 
trailing  the  meek-eyed  mule  in  the  lowly  cotton-path  ?  , 

Poor  Rebecca!  Did  mischievous  Puck  pour  into  the 
soulful  eyes  of  the  "Apostle's"  fair  Titania  some  curst  de- 
coction that  caused  her  to  dote  on  a  pie-bald  ass  and  mis- 
take his  ears  for  angel's  wings,  his  fiery  muzzle  for  a  seraph's 
radiant  nimbus?  Or  do  you  possess  beneath  that  fair  ex- 
terior all  the  frailties  of  Hamlet's  desiring  dam,  who  is  sup- 
posed to  have  left  a  celestial  bed  to  prey  on  garbage?  We 
do  not  know ;  but  be  it  as  it  may,  the  "Apostle"  will  remain 
forever  your  guardian  angel — will  gather  you  beneath  his 
wing  even  as  the  careful  hen  gathereth  some  other  bench- 
legged  gosling,  and  protect  you  from  the  wintry  scorn  of 
those  cruel  papers,  that  cannot  understand  that  tho'  you  have 
sinned  you  have  also  suffered.  Be  virtuous,  Rebecca,  and 
you  may  be  happy  yet. 


OPTIMISM  VS.  PESSIMISM. 
THE  PREACHER  AND  TH£  "APOSTLE." 

I  am  in  receipt  of  a  long  letter  from  a  Missouri  minister, 
in  which,  to  my  surprise,  he  says :  "I  regret  to  note  that 
you  are  a  Pessimist.  Permit  me  to  express  the  hope  that 
so  powerful  a  journal  as  the  Iconoclast  will  yet  espouse  the 
sunny  philosophy  of  Optimism,  which  teaches  that  all  that 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  59 

is  accords  with  the  Plan  of  the  Creator,  and  works  together 
for  the  ultimate  good." 

"God  moves  in  a  mysterious  way  his  wonders  to  perform." 

I  had  not  hitherto  suspected  that  I  was  inoculated  with 
the  awful  microbes  of  Pessimism,  but  if  my  reverend  friend 
is  a  professor  in  the  sunny  school  of  Optimism,  I  certainly 
do  not  belong  to  that  sect.  If  "all  that  is  accords  with  the 
Plan  of  the  Creator,"  did  not  Christ  deserve  to  be  crucified 
for  bringing  about  new  conditions,  and  Gallileo  to  go  to 
jail  for  interfering  with  the  stupid  ignorance  of  certain 
Catholic  cardinals  ?  Can  even  the  Missouri  minister  be  held 
guiltless  when  he  attempts  to  turn  my  thinking  apparatus 
around  and  make  it  operate  from  the  other  end  ?  Surely  he 
should  not  interfere  in  even  so  slight  a  particular  with  the 
"Plan  of  the  Creator,"  who  may  have  been  moving  "in  a 
mysterious  way  his  wonders  to  perform"  when  he  gave  the 
supposedly  pessimistic  bent  to  my  mind.  Nay,  if  my  Chris- 
tian friend  do  but  have  the  rheumatism,  should  he  not  refrain 
from  poulticing  himself,  lest  he  throw  the  celestial  machinery 
out  of  gear?  If  changes  wrought  in  religion,  science,  gov- 
ernment, etc.,  constitute  a  portion  of  the  "Plan,"  we  must 
concede  it  to  have  originally  been  a  very  faulty  affair — quite 
upsetting  the  optimistic  theory  that  "Whatever  is  is  right." 

The  terms  Pessimism  and  Optimism  are  handled  very 
loosely  in  these  latter  days.  In  the  modern  acceptance  of 
the  terms,  the  first  may  be  defined  as  a  chronic  intellectual 
bellyache,  the  latter  as  an  incurable  case  of  mossbackism. 
The  thorough  Pessimist  believes  the  world  is  going  in  hot 
haste  to  the  demnition  bowwows,  and  that  nothing  short  of 
a  miracle  can  head  it  off;  the  full-fledged  Optimist  carries 
concealed  about  his  person  an  abiding  faith  that  "God  or- 
dereth  all  things  well" — that  he  not  only  designed  the  mighty 
universe,  but  is  giving  his  personal  attention  to  the  details 
of  its  management.  Really,  I  do  not  believe  I  am  Pessimist 
to  hurt,  or  that  my  reverend  critic  is  so  dangerously  ill  of 
the  Optimistic  disease  as  he  imagines.  Perhaps  he  has  been 
living  too  high  for  great  intellectual  effort.  Were  he  in  the 
condition  of  some  millions  of  his  fellow  creatures,  the  cuticle 
of  whose  abdomens  is  flapping  against  their  vertebrae  like 
a  wet  dish-rag  warping  itself  around  a  wire  clothes-line,  per- 
haps there  would  not  be  quite  so  much  sunshine  in  his  phil- 
osophy. The  man  with  whom  the  world  goes  well  is  apt  to 
prattle  of  the  "ultimate  good"  when  considering  the  woes 
of  other  people. 

The  basis  of  Optimism  is  foreordination,  the  foolish  faith 


60  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

that  before  God  created  the  majestic  universe  and  sent  the 
planets  whirling  about  the  blazing  sun ;  that  before  the  first 
star  gleamed  in  the  black,  over-hanging  firmament  or  a 
single  mountain  peak  rose  from  the  watery  waste,  he  calmly 
sat  him  down  and  mapped  out  every  act  of  moral  man — 
decreed  every  war  and  pestilence,  the  rise  and  fall  of  every 
nation,  and  fixed  the  date  of  every  birth  and  death.  That 
may  be  excellent  "orthodoxy,"  but  it  is  not  good  sense.  I 
reject  the  theory  that  all  the  happenings  here  below  "accord 
with  the  Plan  of  the  Creator — work  together  for  the  ulti- 
mate good."  Hence,  I  am  not  an  Optimist.  I  dare  not 
accuse  my  Creator  of  being  responsible  for  all  the  sin  and 
sorrow,  suffering  and  shame  that  since  the  dawn  of  history 
has  bedewed  the  world  with  blood  and  tears. 

I  do  not  believe  the  "Plan  of  the  Creator"  contemplated 
that  millions  of  people  should  perish  miserably  by  war,  and 
famine  and  pestilence.  I  do  not  believe  the  black  buck  who 
ravishes  and  murders  a  white  babe  is  one  of  the  great  moral 
agents  of  the  Almighty,  nor  that  the  infamous  act  has  any 
possible  tendency  to  promote  "the  ultimate  good/'  And 
did  I  so  believe,  I  would  keep  my  shotgun  loaded  just  the 
same.  I  do  not  believe  that  the  blessed  God  intended  there 
should  ever  be  a  liar  or  a  thief,  a  prostitute  or  a  murderer 
in  this  beautiful  world.  I  do  not  believe  that  the  Creator 
entered  into  a  compact  with  the  devil  or  a  covenant  with 
the  cholera.  And  if  not,  then  all  that  is  does  not  "accord 
with  the  Plan  of  the  Creator."  If  that  be  Pessimism,  make 
the  most  of  it. 

That  there  is  a  Divine  Plan  I  do  not  doubt ;  but  I  believe 
it  to  be  broader,  deeper,  more  worthy  of  the  great  Demiur- 
gus  than  that  which  pictures  him  telling  a  priest  how  to  carve 
his  pantaloons  or  sacrifice  a  pair  of  pigeons,  than  standing 
idly  by  with  his  hands  under  his  coat-tails,  while  some 
drunken  duffer  beats  the  head  off  his  better  half  with  a  boot- 
jack, or  a  bronze  brute  rips  the  scalp  from  a  smiling  babe. 
If  that's  the  kind  of  a  hair-pin  who  occupies  the  throne  of 
heaven,  I  don't  blame  Lucifer  for  raising  a  revolution.  I 
would  have  taken  a  fall  out  of  him  myself,  even  had  I  known 
that  my  viscera  would  be  strewn  across  the  face  of  the 
shrinking  universe. 

God  gave  us  life,  and  this  grand  old  globe  for  habitat. 
He  stored  it  with  everything  necessary  to  the  health  and  hap- 
piness of  the  human  race— poured  his  treasures  forth  with 
a  hand  so  bounteous  that  tho'  its  population  were  doubled, 
trebled,  it  might  go  on  forever  and  no  mortal  son  of  Adam 
need  suffer  for  life's  necessaries.  The  gaunt  spectres  of 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  61 

Want  and  Pestilence  are  not  of  his  creation ;  they  were  born 
of  Greed  and  Ignorance.  God  sent  no  devil  with  hoofs  and 
horns  to  torment  or  tempt  us ;  he  gave  to  us  passions  neces- 
sary to  the  perpetuation  and  progress  of  the  race  and  divine 
Reason  wherewith  to  rule  them — then  left  us  to  work  out 
our  own  salvation,  aided  by  those  silent  forces  that  are  press- 
ing all  animate  and  inanimate  life  onward  to  perfection. 
Reason  needs  no  celestial  guide,  no  heavenly  monitor,  for  it 
is  the  grandest  attribute  of  God  himself.  Where  Reason  sits 
enthroned  God  reigns ! 

For  more  than  half  a  million  years  man  has  been  toiling 
upwards,  impelled  by  that  mysterious  law  that  causes  the 
pine  to  spring  towards  the  sun.  Sometimes  the  advance  is 
by  leaps  and  bounds,  as  when  some  giant  intellect — some  Son 
of  God,  especially  gifted  with  the  attributes  of  his  Sire — 
brushes  aside  the  obstructions  at  which  lesser  men  toil  in 
vain ;  sometimes  the  Car  of  Progress  stands  still  for  a  thou- 
sand years,  else  rolls  slowly  back  toward  brutishness,  there 
being  none  of  sufficient  strength  to  advance  the  standards 
further  up  the  rugged  mountain-side — nearer  the  Celestial 
City.  Thus,  ever  in  ebb  and  flow,  gaining  and  losing,  only 
to  regain ;  nations  rising  and  falling  but  to  serve  as  stepping- 
stones  whereon  mount  a  nobler  race,  a  grander  people,  the 
irrepressible  conflict  of  the  God-like  with  the  Beast-like  in 
man  goes  bravely  on. 

In  half  a  million  years  we  have  come  far — won  many 
a  fair  field  from  the  dominion  of  Darkness.  We  no  longer 
dwell  in  caves  and  hollow  trees,  fighting  naked  with  the 
wild  beasts  of  the  forest  for  our  prey.  We  have  erected 
temples  to  that  God  who  dwells,  not  only  in  the  heavens, 
but  here  on  earth — in  the  brain  and  heart  of  the  human 
race.  We  have  made  matter  so  far  subject  unto  mind  that 
Nature's  mighty  forces  have  become  our  obedient  bond- 
slaves. We  have  built  societies,  nations,  weighed  the  world 
and  measured  the  stars.  We  have  acquired  not  only 
knowledge  and  power,  but  love  and  modesty.  The  procre- 
ative  passion  no  longer  crawls,  a  hideous  thing,  but  soars 
aloft,  a  winged  Psyche.  Thus,  one  by  one,  through  the 
long  ages,  have  we  built  up  within  ourselves  the  attributes 
of  the  Most  High,  toward  whom  our  feet  are  tending.  Life 
is  no  longer  mere  animalism,  content  to  gorge  itself  with 
roots  and  raw  meat  and  sit  in  the  sun.  The  ear  craves 
melody,  the  eye  beauty,  the  brain  dominion,  while  the  soul 
mounts  to  the  very  stars ! 

Thus  far  have  we  come  out  of  the  Valley  of  Darkness, 
led  on,  not 'by  those  who  believe  that  "all  that  is  accords 


62  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

with  the  Plan  of  the  Creator,"  but  by  those  whose  battle- 
cry  has  ever  been, 

"Forward,  forward  let  us  range, 
Let  the  great  world  spin  forever 
Down  the  ringing  grooves  of  change." 

Every  reformation  yet  wrought  in  religion,  science  or 
politics,  was  the  work  of  men  who  declined  to  accept  the 
doctrines,  enunciated  by  the  Missouri  divine.  If  I  am  a 
Pessimist  I  am  in  such  excellent  company  as  Confucius  and 
Christ,  General  Washington  and  Mr.  Gladstone,  Prof. 
Morse  and  Dr.  Pasteur,  while  my  critic  is  training  with 
the  gang  that  poisoned  Socrates,  bribed  Iscariot  and  cruci- 
fied the  Savior.  And  the  world  persists  in  judging  a  man 
by  the  company  he  keeps ! 


BALAAM'S  ASS. 
AND  OTHER  BURROS. 

"Force  first  made  conquest,  and  that  conquest,  law; 
Till  Superstition  taught  the  tyrant  awe, 
Then  shared  the  tyranny,  then  lent  it  aid, 
And  gods  of  conquerors,  slaves  of  subjects  made. 
She,  from  the  rending  earth  and  bursting  skies, 
Saw  gods  descend  and  fiends  infernal  rise; 
Here  fixed  the  dreadful,  there  the  blest  abodes; 
Fear  made  her  devils  and  weak  hope  her  gods; 
Gods  partial,  changeful,  passionate,  unjust, 
Whose  attributes  were  rage,  revenge  and  lust; 
Such  as  the  souls  of  cowards  might  conceive, 
And,  formed  like  tyrants,  tyrants  would  believe. 
Zeal  then,  not  charity,  became  the  guide; 
And  hell  was  built  on  spite,  and  heaven  on  pride." 

—Pope. 

Kind  reader,  have  a  care !  For  aught  I  know  this  article 
may  be  the  rankest  blasphemy,  and  reading  it  may  wreck 
your  immortal  soul — granting  of  course,  that  you  are  in 
possession  of  such  perishable  property.  I  submitted  it 
to  several  of  my  brother  ministers  and  sought  their  opinion 
as  to  the  propriety  of  publishing  it ;  but  while  some  assured 
me  that  it  was  calculated  to  purify  the  moral  atmosphere 
somewhat  and  foster  respect  for  true  religion,  others  were 
equally  certain  that  Satan  had  inspired  it — that  it  was,  in 
fact,  a  choice  bit  of  immigration  literature  for  the  lower  re- 
gions. Finding  even  the  elders  unable  to  decide  what 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  63 

should  be  done  with  Balaam's  Ass — whether  it  should  be 
turned  loose  upon  the  land  like  another  evangelist,  or  con- 
signed to  the  flames  as  a  hopeless  heretic — I  determined 
to  give  it  the  benefit  of  the  doubt.  The  animal  may  break 
into  the  preserves  of  some  unctuous  hypocrites  and  trample 
a  few  choice  flowers  of  sacerdotal  folly ;  but  I  opine  that  no 
honest  man  of  average  intellect  will  find  herein  occasion 
for  complaint.  I  would  not  wantonly  wound  the  sensibili- 
ties of  those  earnest  but  ignorant  souls  who  believe  the  very 
chapter  headings  of  the  Bible  to  have  been  inspired;  who 
interpret  literally  every  foolish  fable  preserved  therein — 
''like  flies  in  amber";  but  the  Car  of  Progress  cannot  roll 
forward  without  crushing  an  occasional  pismire.  We  can- 
not bid  it  stand  forever  in  the  same  old  rut,  like  an  aban- 
doned road-cart  or  "Jeffersonian  Democrat,"  because 
across  its  shining  pathway  lie  the  honest  prejudices  of  zeal- 
ous stupidity. 

The  Bible  is  a  great  gold-mine,  in  which  inexhaustible 
store  of  yellow  metal  is  mixed  with  much  worthless  rubbish 
that  must  be  purged  away  by  honest  criticism  before  the 
book  becomes  really  profitable — even  fit  for  general  circu- 
lation. I  would  rather  place  in  the  hands  of  an  innocent 
girl  a  copy  of  the  Police  Gazette  or  Sunday  Sun  than  an  un- 
expurgated  Bible.  It  is  a  book  I  value  much,  yet  keep  un- 
der lock  and  key  with  Don  Juan  and  the  Decameron.  It 
contains  both  the  grandest  morality  and  most  degrading 
obscenity  ever  conceived  in  the  brain  of  mortal  man.  There 
are  passages  whose  beauty  and  power  might  cause  the  heart 
of  an  angel  to  leap  in  ecstacy,  others  that  would  call  a 
blush  of  shame  to  the  brassy  front  of  the  foulest  fiend  that 
ever  howled  and  shrieked  thro'  the  sulphurous  valleys  of 
hell. 

The  man  who  rejects  the  Bible  altogether  because  it  is 
honey-combed  with  barbarous  traditions,  rank  with  revolt- 
ing stories  and  darkened  by  the  shadow  of  a  savage  super- 
stition, is  cousin-german  to  him  that  casts  aside  a  priceless 
pearl  because  it  is  coated  with  ocean  slime.  He  that  ac- 
cepts it  in  its  entirety — gulps  it  down  like  an  anaconda 
absorbing  an  unwashed  goat;  who  makes  no  attempt  to 
separate  the  essential  from  the  accidental — the  utterance 
of  inspiration  from  the  garrulity  of  hopeless  nescience; 
who  forgets  that  it  is  half  an  epic  poem  filled  with  the 
gorgeous  imagery  of  the  Orient,  may,  like  the  ass  which 
Balaam  rode,  open  its  mouth  and  speak ;  but  he  never  saw 
the  Angel  of  the  Lord;  he  utters  the  words  of  emptiness 
and  ignorance. 


64  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

Had  the  Bible  been  taught  intelligently  and  truthfully 
the  entire  world  would  have  accepted  it  centuries  ago.  Its 
very  worst  enemies  are  those  who  insist  upon  its  inerrancy 
— who  strive  by  some  esoteric  alchemy  of  logic  to  transmute 
its  every  fragment  of  base  metal  into  bars  of  yellow  gold, 
the  folly  of  the  creature  into  the  wisdom  of  the  Creator. 
During  the  Dark  Ages  hide-bound  orthodoxy  prevailed  and 
practically  every  man  was  a  church  communicant ;  it  is  par- 
amount to-day  only  in  those  countries  that  have  failed  to 
keep  pace  with  the  Car  of  Progress.  It  is  a  sad  com- 
mentary upon  all  religious  faiths  that  they  flourish  best 
where  ignorance  prevails — that  Atheism  is  rapidly  becom- 
ing the  recognized  correlative  of  education.  By  presum- 
ing to  know  too  much  of  God's  great  plan ;  by  decrying  in- 
telligent criticism  and  attempting  to  seal  the  lips  of  living 
students  with  the  dicta  of  dead  scholastics;  by  standing 
ever  ready  to  brand  as  blasphemers  those  who  presume  to 
question  or  dare  to  differ,  the  dogmatists  are  driving 
millions  of  God-fearing  men  into  passive  indifference  or 
overt  opposition. 

Ignorance  is  not  a  crime  per  se;  but  it  is  the  mother  of 
Superstition  and  Intolerance,  those  twin  demons  that  have 
time  and  again  deluged  the  world  with  blood  and  tears; 
that  for  forty  centuries  have  stood  like  ravenous  wolves  in 
the  path  of  human  progress;  that  with  their  empoisoned 
fangs  have  torn  a  thousand  times  the  snowy  breast  of  Lib- 
erty— that  have  done  more  to  inspire  Doubt  and  foster  In- 
fidelity than  all  the  French  philosophes  that  ever  wielded 
pen.  The  logical,  well-informed  man  who  to-day  becomes 
a  church  communicant  does  not  so  because  of  the  doctrine 
promulgated  by  the  average  pulpiteer,  but  despite  of  it. 

Trie  long  night  of  intellectual  slavery  has  not  altogether 
passed,  but  on  the  higher  hills  already  flame  the  harbingers 
of  Reason's  glorious  morn.  Gone  is  the  Inquisition  with 
its  sacred  infamies — the  Christian  rack  is  broken  and  the 
thumb-screw  rusted  in  twain.  The  persuasive  wheel  no 
longer  whisks  the  non-conformist  into  full  communion,  the 
Iron  Virgin  has  ceased  to  press  the  writhing  heretic  to  her 
orthodox  heart.  The  faggot  has  fallen  from  the  hand  of 
the  saintly  fanatic  and  the  branding  iron  from  the  loving 
grasp  of  the  benevolent  bigot,  while  Superstition,  that  once 
did  rule  the  world  with  autocratic  sway,  can  only  shriek  her 
impotent  curses  forth  and  flourish  her  foolish  boycott  at 
Reason's  growing  flame. 

If  I  can  but  enable  sectarians  to  understand  that  all  so- 
called  sacred  books  are  essentially  the  same — that  Brahma 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  65 

and  Baal,  Jupiter  and  Jehovah  are  really  identical ;  if  I  can 
but  make  them  cognizant  of  the  crime  they  commit  in  de- 
crying honest  criticism ;  if  I  can  but  convince  them  that  the 
man  who  is 

"Slave  to  no  sect,  who  takes  no  private  road, 
But  looks  thro'  nature  up  to  nature's  God," 

is  not  necessarily  an  active  emissary  of  evil  whom  it  is  their 
duty  to  denounce ;  if  I  can  but  create  a  suspicion  in  the 
minds  of  the  clergy  that  perhaps  they  know  no  more  of  the 
Omnipotent  than  do  other  men — are  possibly  mistaking  bile 
for  benevolence,  gall  for  godliness  and  chronic  laziness  for 
"a  call  to  preach" — I  wrill  feel  that  these  few  hours  ex- 
pended grooming  Balaam's  burro  have  not  been  cast  away. 


Our  information  concerning  the  Rev.  Mr.  Balaam  and 
his  burro  is  very  limited.  Although  the  latter  was  endowed 
with  the  gift  of  gab  it  appears  to  have  spoken  but  once  and 
then  at  the  especial  bidding  of  an  angel,  which  fact  leads  us 
to  suspect  that  the  voluble  jackasses  now  extant  have  de- 
teriorated at  both  ends  since  the  days  of  their  distinguished 
ancestor — have  parted  with  all  their  brain  as  well  as  with 
half  their  legs.  Bro.  Balaam  does  not  appear  to  have 
"syndicated"  his  sermons  or  made  any  special  bid  for  noto- 
riety. If  he  ever  hired  half -starved  courtesans  a  la  Park- 
hurst — to  dance  the  can-can,  then  hastened  into  court  to  file 
complaint  against  the  very  bawds  he  had  filled  with  booze 
and  dandled  naked  on  his  knee ;  if  he  called  the  ladies  of 
his  congregation  "old  sows"  after  the  manner  of  Sam  Jones ; 
if  he  got  himself  tried  on  a  charge  of  heresy  or  became  en- 
tangled with  some  half-wit  sister  whose  religious  fervor 
led  her  to  mistake  Levite  for  the  Lord,  no  record  of  the 
shameful  circumstance  has  been  preserved.  He  appears 
to  have  attended  pretty  strictly  to  the  prophet  business,  and 
we  may  presume,  from  such  stray  bits  of  his  biography  as 
have  come  down  to  us,  that  he  prospered. 

The  Israelites,  who  had  gotten  out  of  Egypt  between  two 
days  with  considerable  of  the  portable  property  of  other 
people  concealed  about  their  persons,  had  gone  into  the 
Bill  Dalton  business  under  the  direct  guidance — as  they 
claimed — of  their  Deity,  and  were  for  some  time  eminently 
successful.  Wholesale  murder  and  robbery  became  their 
only  industry,  arson  and  oppression  their  recognized  amuse- 
ment. They  had  swiped  up  several  cities — "leaving  not 
a  soul  alive" — and  were  now  grinding  the  snickersnee  for 


66  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

Moab  and  Midian,  The  people  of  the  petty  nations  of 
Palestine — whom  God's  anointed  received  an  imperative 
command  to  "utterly  destroy" — had  builded  them  happy 
homes  and  accumulated  considerable  property  by  patient 
industry.  They  appear  to  have  been  peaceably  disposed 
and  devout  worshippers  of  those  deities  from  whom  the 
better  attributes  of  Jehovah  were  subsequently  borrowed. 
The  Israelites  had  not  struck  a  lick  of  honest  labor  for 
forty  years.  They  had  drifted  about  like  Coxey's  "Com- 
monwealers"  and  developed  into  the  most  fiendish  mob  of 
God-fearing  guerrillas  and  marauding  cut-throats  of  which 
history  makes  mention.  Compared  Avith  Joshua's  murder- 
ous Jews,  the  Huns  who  followed  Atilla  were  avatars  of 
mercy  and  the  Sioux  of  Sitting  Bull  were  Good  Samaritans. 
A  careful  comparison  of  the  crimes  committed  by  the 
Kurds  in  Armenia  with  those  perpetrated  by  "God's  chosen 
people"  in  Palestine  will  prove  that  the  followers  of  Allah 
are  but  amateurs  in  the  art  of  courage.  Doubtless  any 
other  people,  brutalized  by  centuries  of  bondage,  then 
turned  loose  without  king  or  country,  with  only  ignorant 
prophets  for  guides  and  avaricious  priests  for  law-givers, 
would  have  become  equally  cruel — would  have  adopted  a 
divinity  devoid  of  mercy  and  a  stranger  to  justice.  The 
god  of  a  people  is,  and  must  of  necessity  ever  be  a  reflec- 
tion of  themselves,  an  idealization  of  their  own  virtues  and 
vices — a  magic  mirror  in  which,  Narcissus-like,  man  wor- 
ships his  own  image 

The  Jews  are  one  of  the  grandest  people  that  ever  dwelt 
upon  the  earth.  A  more  intellectual  and  progressive  race 
is  unknown  to  human  history ;  but,  like  all  others,  it  had  its 
age  of  savagery  and  its  epoch  of  barbarism  before  it  reached 
the  golden  era  of  civilization.  I  am  not  criticising  the 
Jews  for  their  treatment  of  the  Canaanites  during  that  cen- 
tury when  crass  ignorance  made  them  credulous  and  bond- 
age rendered  them  brutal ;  but  to  assume  that  the  excesses 
of  semi-savages  were  heaven-inspired  were  a  damning  libel 
of  the  Deity.  I  rather  enjoy  being  lied  about  by  malicious 
lollipops;  but  did  I  sit  secure  in  some  celestial  citadel,  hold- 
ing the  thunderbolts  of  heaven  within  my  hand,  it  were 
hardly  safe  to  assert  that  I  instigated  such  unparalleled 
atrocities  as  were  perpetrated  by  the  emancipated  Israelites 
in  Palestine.  I  would  certainly  be  tempted  to  take  a  pot- 
shot at  an  occasional  preacher  who  persisted  in  defaming 
me  with  his  foolish  dogmatism. 

Balak,  the  king  of  Moab  and  Midian,  saw  that  he  was 
not  strong  enough  to  withstand  the  sacred  marauders,  and 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  67 

well  knew  that  surrender  meant  a  wholesale  massacre — 
that  those  who  had  dared  to  defend  their  homes  would  be 
placed  under  harrows  of  iron — that  the  silvery  head  of  the 
aged  grandsire  would  sink  beneath  a  sword  wielded  in  the 
name  of  God ;  that  unborn  babes  would  be  ripped  from  the 
wombs  of  Moabite  women  and  the  maidens  ot  Midian 
coerced  into  concubinage  by  their  heaven-led  captors  In 
this  dire  extremity  Balak  bethought  him  of  Bro.  Balaam, 
who  was  not  "a  prophet  of  God,"  as  popularly  supposed, 
but  a  priest  of  Baal,  the  deity  devoutly  worshipped  in  Moab 
and  Midian.  It  were  ridiculous  to  suppose  that  the  king, 
princes  and  elders  of  Moab  and  Midian  would  apj.-eal  for 
aid  to  the  God  of  their  enemies  instead  of  to  their  own 
divinity,  for  in  those  days  the  principal  business  of  a  deity 
was  to  wage  war  in  behalf  of  his  worshippers.  Balaam 
was  a  Midianite,  and  Balak  sent  messengers  to  him  "with 
the  reward  of  divination  in  their  hand,"  and  begged  '.hat 
he  would  kindly  ojvne  over  and  knock  the  Israelites  off  the 
Christmas  tree  with  one  of  his  smooth-bore,  muzzle  loading 
maledictions ;  "for,"  said  he,  with  a  pious  fervor  that  proves 
he  was  addressing  a  priest  of  his  own  faith,  "I  wot  that  he 
whom  thou  blesseth  is  blessed,  and  whom  thou  curseth  is 
cursed."  He  evidently  believed  that  Balaam  carried  the 
celestial  thunderbolts  concealed  about  his  person — that  \\  hen 
he  turned  them  loose  those  on  wrom  they  alighted  frizzled 
up  like  a  fat  angle-worm  on  a  sea-coal  fire.  The  good  man 
said  he  would  see  what  could  be  done  to  help  Balak  out  of 
the  hole. 

And  God  came  unto  Balaam  and  said,  What  men  are  these  with 
thee?" 

As  Balaam  was  evidently  expecting  the  visit  we  may  con- 
clude that  the  caller  was  Baal,  as  Jehovah  was  not  at  that 
time  on  visiting  terms  with  the  Gentile  priests — was  busily 
engaged  pulling  down  their  altars  and  putting  them  to  the 
sword.  Balaam  gratified  the  very  natural  curiosity  of  his 
celestial  visitor,  and  the  latter,  after  learning  all  the  partic- 
ulars, cautioned  his  diviner  or  priest  not  to  make  any  bad 
breaks.  Balaam  sent  the  ambassadors  back  with  word  that 
Baal  was  a  trifle  shy  of  curses  at  that  particular  time. 
Balak  evidently  understood  the  situation,  for  he  sent  other 
agents  with  larger  offerings.  Balaam  still  insisted  that  he 
had  received  no  permission  to  wipe  up  the  Plain  of  Moab 
with  the  ex-brick  builders,  but  saddled  his  ass  and  went 
along,  promising  to  do  the  best  he  could  for  his  bleeding 
country.  He  evidently  desired  to  size  up  the  situation  and 


68  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

be  quite  sure  that  none  of  his  curses  would  come  home  to 
roost.  Doubtless  he  also  desired  to  see  if  Balak  was  bid- 
ding all  he  could  afford  for  celestial  aid,  for  we  have  no 
reason  to  believe  that  Bro.  Balaam  was  in  the  prophet  busi- 
ness for  his  health  or  peddling  curses  for  recreation.  While 
en  route  his  companions  probably  informed  him  that  the 
Jews  were  as  frequent  as  jugs  in  a  Prohibition  precinct — 
that  they  had  slaughtered  the  people  of  Ai,  driven  Og  into 
the  earth,  overcome  Ammon  and  were  making  the  rest  of 
the  Canaanitish  nations  hard  to  catch,  for  the  good  man 
was  seized  with  a  sudden  desire  to  take  the  back  track: 
His  burro  balked  and  Balaam  told  his  fellow  travelers 
that  an  angel  was  interfering  with  his  transportation  fa- 
cilities. Perhaps  the  princes  of  Moab  made  ribald  remarks 
anent  the  celestial  obstruction — even  hinted  that  Balaam 
had  best  get  a  Maud  S.  move  on  him  or  he  might  contract 
,a  vigorous  case  of  unavailing  regret.  Then  the  burro 
began  to  blab.  Like  many  of  the  old  pagan  priests,  Balaam 
was  doubtless  an  adept  in  the  art  of  ventriloquism.  That 
may  have  convinced  the  ambassadors  and  bulled  the  price 
of  curses;  for  then,  as  now,  it  was  no  uncommon  thing 
for  the  utterance  of  an  ass  to  be  mistaken  for  that  of  an 
oracle.  Or  some  Doubting  Thomas  may  have  twisted  the 
burro's  tail.  For  some  reason  not  set  forth  by  the  sacred 
chronicler,  the  angel  withdrew  his  objections  and  the 
prophet  proceeded  on  his  way,  but  still  protesting  that  no 
permit  had  been  accorded  him  to  put  a  kibosh  on  Joshua's 
free-booters. 

Balaam  was  entirely  too  smart  to  pray  for  rain  when  the 
wind  was  in  the  wrong  quarter — altogether  too  smooth  to 
launch  his  anathemas  at  an  army  he  knew  could  take  Moab 
by  the  back-hair  and  rub  her  nose  in  the  sawdust.  He 
counted  the  campfircs  of  Israel  and  concluded  that  Balak's 
promises  of  high  honors  were  worth  no  more  than  a  camp- 
meeting  certificates  of  conversion — that  he  would  soon  be 
hoofing  it  over  the  hills  with  his  coat-tails  full  of  arrows ; 
so,  after  working  his  patrons  for  all  the  spare  cash  in  sight, 
he  made  a  sneak,  leaving  his  sovereign  to  wage  war  with- 
out the  aid  of  supernatural  weapons.  Like  many  of  his 
sacerdotal  successors,  Balaam  took  precious  good  care  to 

get  on  the  winning  side. 

*        *         * 

Ever  since  the  days  of  Bro.  Balaam  there  has  been  con- 
siderable trading  of  curses  for  cold  cash.  The  industry  has 
been  patiently  built  up  from  humble  beginnings  to  a  mag- 
nificent business.  From  an  itinerant  curse  peddler,  trotting 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  69 

about  on  a  spavined  burro  and  resorting  to  the  methods  of 
the  mountebank  to  create  a  market  for  his  merchandise,  it 
lias  become  a  vast  commercial  concern  with  costly  estab- 
lishments in  every  country.  The  first  curses,  as  might 
have  been  expected,  were  very  crude  affairs — little  more 
than  hoodoos,  intended  to  promote  the  material  welfare  of 
the  purchaser  at  the  expense  of  other  people.  A  king  of 
ye  olden  times  bought  a  curse  and  turned  it  loose  upon  his 
enemies — "played  the  god  an  engine  on  his  foe" — much  as 
a  modern  prince  might  a  gatling-gun ;  but  it  seems  to  have 
slowly  dawned  upon  the  royal  ignorami  that  the  Lord  is 
usually  on  the  side  of  the  heaviest  battalions — a  fact  which 
Napoleon  emphasized.  The  practice  of  fencing  in  a  nation 
with  a  few  wild-eyed  prophets,  or  sending  a  single  soldier 
forth  with  a  hair-trigger  'hoodoo  and  the  jawbone  of  a 
defunct  jackass  to  drive  great  armies  into  the  earth,  gradu- 
ally fell  into  disuse — curses  and  blessings  became  a  drug  in 
the  market. 

About  this  time  the  Jewish  priesthood  began  to  take 
kindly  to  the  doctrine  of  future  rewards  and  punishments. 
This  theological  thesis — promulgated  before  the  age  of 
Abraham — had  influenced  to  some  extent  the  religious 
thought  of  the  entire  eastern  hemisphere.  That  the  Jews 
were  among  the  last  to  admit  the  immortality  of  the  soul 
was  doubtless  due  to  the  fact  that,  because  of  their  long  en- 
slavement, they  did  not  emerge  from  semi-savagery  so  soon 
as  did  the  other  divisions  of  the  great  Semitic  family.  Fur- 
thermore, for  a  long  period  after  their  emancipation  the 
Jew\s  seem  to  have  received  the  rewards  of  their  peculiar 
virtues  here  on  earth  and  were  little  inclined  to  defer  their 
happiness  to  the  hereafter — were  amply  able  to  punish  their 
enemies  and  had  no  occasion  to  delegate  that  pleasant  duty 
to  a  Superior  Power.  Finally,  however,  the  fortunes  of 
war  began  to  go  against  them.  They  were  no  longer  able 
to  make  on  earth  a  heaven  for  themselves  and  a  hell  for 
other  people.  Instead  of  despoiling  others  they  discov- 
ered an  occasional  hiatus  in  their  own  smoke-house.  In- 
stead of  burning  the  cities  of  their  inoffensive  neighbors 
their  own  began  to  blaze.  The  priests  and  prophets  in- 
sisted that  these  evils  befell  them  because  they  had  ne- 
glected their  Deity ;  but  the  more  devout  they  became — 
the  more  fat  kids,  fine  meal  and  first  fruits  they  referred 
to  the  Levite  larder  as  "offerings  to  the  Lord" — the  more 
deplorable  became  their  condition.  The  people  began  to 
drift  to  the  more  reasonable  religion  of  their  neighbors  and 
even  the  wisest  of  their  kings  could  not  be  held  to  the 


70  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

faith  of  their  fathers.  The  Jewish  priesthood  gradually 
'adopted  the  bid  Parsi  doctrine  <of  heaven  and  hell — a 
doctrine  unrecognized  by  Abraham,  Isaac  and  Jacob  and 
having  no  place  in  the  theology  of  Moses. 

The  Jews  eventually  discovered  that  robbery  was  wrong 
and  assassination  a  crime — that  the  practice  of  ripping  open 
pregnant  women  and  putting  prisoners  of  war  under  har- 
rows of  iron  was  displeasing  to  the  Lord.  It  was  a  forcible 
illustration  of  the  ancient  axiom  that  it  makes  a  great  dif- 
ference whose  ox  is  gored.  Instead  of  founding  a  mighty 
nation  as  predicted  by  their  prophets,  the  Jews  were  con- 
quered, scattered,  enslaved. 

Palestine  was  filled  with  foreigners ;  had  become  a  relig- 
ious Babel,  a  theological  chaos.  The  time  was  ripe  for  a 
religious  revolution  such  as  had  been  inaugurated  in  India 
six  centuries  before.  It  was  accomplished  and,  as  might 
have  been  expected,  the  result  was  a  curious  composition ; 
a  religious  olla-podrida  in  which  the  profound  wisdom  of 
Zoroaster  and  the  childish  superstition  of  western  barbar- 
ians, grand  morality  and  monumental  absurdity  elbow  each 
other  like  spectres  in  a  delirium — in  which  is  heard  both 
"the  still  small  voice"  of  Omnipotent  God  and  the  mega- 
lophanous  bray  of  Balaam's  Ass. 

Jehovah,  the  national  God  of  the  Jews,  supplanted  Jove 
and  Baal,  Ashtaroth  and  Oromasdes,  and  with  their  thrones 
took  many  of  their  attributes.  The  doctrine  of  future  re- 
wards and  punishments  became  the  corner-stone  of  the  new 
theology,  while  further  concessions  were  made  to  ethnic 
creeds  in  various  stages  of  decay  by  the  adoption  of  the 
Trinity,  Incarnation  and  Resurrection.  The  Jewish 
prophets  were  accepted  by  the  composite  cult — which  Christ 
may  have  originated,  but  certainly  did  not  develop — but 
their  every  utterance  was  given  a  new  interpretation  of 
which  the  Hebrew  hierarchy  had  never  dreamed.  The 
great  kingdom  which  they  had  predicted  was  to  be  spiritual 
instead  of  temporal;  the  Jerusalem  predestined  to  become 
the  capitol  of  a  powerful  prince,  to  whom  all  nations 
should  acknowledge  allegiance — and  pay  tribute — was  not 
the  leprosy-eaten  old  town  among  the  Judean  hills,  but  a 
city  not  made  with  hands,  existing  eternal  in  the  heavens. 
Christianity  does  not  contain  a  single  original  idea.  It 
borrowed  liberally  on  every  hand,  but  chiefly  of  Parseeism 
in  which  faith,  as  taught  by  Zoroaster — Aristotle  says  6000 
years  before  Plato — may  be  found  its  most  important  fea- 
tures. It  owes  absolutely  nothing  to  Judaism  but  the  name 
of  its  God  and  an  idle  string  of  misinterpreted  prophecies 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  71 

—is,  from  first  to  last,  essentially  a  "Gentile"  faith.  There 
never  was  a  religion  instituted  upon  the  earth  that  the 
priesthood  failed  to  transform  into  arrant  folly,  to  debase 
until  it  finally  fell  into  disrepute.  Such  was  the  fate  of 
that  established  by  Zoroaster,  and  upon  the  ruins  of  the 
grandest  theology  this  world  has  known,  Siddartha 
Guatama  erected  the  Buddhist  credo,  which  is  really  a 
revolt  to  first  principles — a  search  for  happiness  here  on 
earth,  the  attainment  of  Nirvana.  So,  too,  the  priesthood 
has  corrupted  the  teachings  of  Christ  until  the  logical  mind 
revolts  from  the  jumble  of  self-evident  absurdities,  rejects 
Revelations  as  a  nursery  tale  and  seeks  by  the  dim  light 
of  science  to  find  the  cause  of  all  Existence. 

The  new  cult  was  not  regarded  kindly  by  the  old  priest- 
hoods, and  the  methods  adopted  for  its  suppression  were 
almost  as  rigorous  as  those  it  in  turn  employed  some  centu- 
ries later  for  the  discouragement  of  other  "blasphemers" 
,and  "heretics" ;  hence  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  old 
Hebrew  doctrine  that  whom  the  Lord  loves  he  makes 
mighty,  gives  wealth  in  plenty  and  concubines  galore,  power 
over  his  enemies  and  privilege  to  despoil  his  neighbors, 
should  have  been  early  transformed  into  "Whom  the  Lord 
loveth  he  chasteneth."  The  doctrine  of  temporal  rewards 
and  punishments  revived  somewhat  as  Christianity  became 
powerful,  but  has  remained  a  subordinate  feature.  As  not 
a  sparrow  falls  to  the  earth  without  a  special  permit  from 
the  Almighty,  it  follows,  as  a  natural  sequence,  that  every 
brutal  crime  is  gracefully  permitted — if  not  ordained — by 
that  dear  Lord  whose  protection  we  daily  pray,  and  whose 
apostles  we  support.  If  we  inquire  why  this  is  so  we  are 
cautioned  not  to  commit  blasphemy — some  worthy  brother 
of  Balaam's  Ass  bids  us  beware  the  Angel  of  the  Lord. 


The  claim  of  the  ancient  priesthoods  to  support  was  based 
on  the  presumption  that  they  promoted  the  national  welfare 
of  the.  people  by  keeping  the  national  deity  in  good  humor. 
Whenever  he  contracted  a  case  of  the  sulks  the  smell  of 
fresh  blood  would  usually  bring  him  around  all  right. 
Sometimes  the  butchery  of  a  few  innocent  birds  and  beasts 
would  do  the  business ;  but  it  not  infrequently  became  neces- 
sary to  commit  a  number  of  homicides  to  get  him  actually 
gay.  When  even  the  sweet  incense  of  blazing  cities  and 
roasting  babes  failed  to  restore  his  hilarity  the  prophet's 
sounded  the  alarm  much  as  the  weather  bureau  gives 
warning  of  approaching  cyclones  and  other  atmospheric 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

disturbances.  In  case  the  dire  predictions  failed  to  mater- 
ialize the  Lord  had  listened  to  their  protestations  that  he 
was  not  doing  the  proper  thing  and  "repented  him" — the 
Immutable  had  changed  his  mind !  The  prophets  were  sup- 
posed to  make  a  man  prosperous  as  a  Tammany  politician 
by  blessing,  or  poor  as  a  Houston  Post  editorial  by  laying 
a  curse  upon  him.  As  civilization  advanced  the  people 
able  to  pay  "the  rewards  of  divination"  became  too  intelli- 
gent to  be  taken  in  by  the  transparent  tricks  of  Bro.  Balaam, 
hence  the  new  priesthood  devoted  itself  chiefly  to  the  spirit- 
ual welfare  of  the  people — made  a  specialty  of  the  here- 
after business.  For  obvious  reasons,  it  is  the  safer  enter- 
prise. 

Man  was  now  told  to  believe  thus-and-so  and  he  would 
be  blessed  eternally,  but  if  he  believed  not  he  would  be 
cursed  everlastingly.  The  rewards  promised  by  the  early 
priesthoods  had,  by  centuries  of  evolution,  developed  from 
good  crops  and  fat  cattle,  fruitful  vines  and  successful  vil- 
lainy, into  mansions  in  heaven ;  the  punishments  from  a 
protracted  drought  or  descent  of  the  Assyrians,  a  bad  case 
of  buck  ague  or  boils  into  a  hell  of  fire  where  the  souls  of 
aged  unbelievers  and  unbaptized  babes  forever  burn.  This 
was  the  old  argumentum  ad  hominem  in  a  new  Mother 
Hubbard ;  but  the  masses  were  still  ignorant,  and  those  who 
could  not  be  bribed  with  the  fruits  of  heaven  were  bluffed 
with  the  fires  of  hell.  The  old  priesthoods  were  crushed 
and  kings  became  the  sworn  defenders  of  the  new  faith, 
even  propagated  it  with  the  sword — dispensed  saving  grace 
with  gallows'  ropes  and  with  the  bludgeon  drove  heaven 
inspired  precepts  into  the  heads  of  unbelievers.  Wisdom 
could  not  withstand  such  logic— rthe  philosopher  yielded  to 
the  unanswerable  argument  of  the  Inquisition.  As  no  one 
could  disprove  the  comforting  doctrine  of  eternal  damna- 
tion, and  there  is  a  strong  vein  of  superstition  in  even  the 
best  of  men,  the  ignorant  populace  cowered  in  terror  most 
pitiful  at  the  feet  of  a  presumptuous  priesthood.  And  to 
this  good  day  men  who  have  managed  in  some  mysterious 
manner  to  dodge  the  mad-house,  believe  that  priests  or 
preachers  are  the  special  deputies  of  the  Deity,  that  a  criti- 
cism of  the  clergy  is  an  insult  to  the  Almighty — that  if  you 
dare  dissent  from  the  foolish  opinions  of  some  wooden- 
headed  dominus  anent  the  Divine  Plan  you  might  as  well 
"curse  God  and  die." 

Once  this  old  ethnic  cult  in  a  new  dress  became  well  es- 
tablished— and  the  source  of  considerable  revenue  to  the 
latter  day  Levites — its  most  glaring  absurdities  were  able  to 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  73 

withstand  for  a  time  even  the  invention  of  the  printing 
press  and  the  general  dissemination  of  knowledge ;  for  "that 
monster  custom,  of  habits  devil,"  is  very  potent  in  shaping 
the  minds  of  men  and  retarding  human  progress.  Thus  we 
find,  in  this  so-called  enlightened  age,  millions  of  men  de- 
fending the  rights  of  certain  scorbutic  families  of  indif- 
ferent minds  and  muddy  morals,  to  sway  the  sovereign's 
sceptre.  Mental  collosi — men  who  tower  up  like  Titians 
in  the  world  of  intellect — are  proud  to  acknowledge  them- 
selves the  "dutiful  subjects"  of  some  brainless  fop  or  beery 
old  female  who  chanced  to  be  born  in  a  royal  bed  while 
their  betters  were  ushered  in  as  the  brats  of  beggars.  So, 
too,  we  find  men  possessing  clear  judicial  minds  defending 
with  all  the  fervor  of  Fifteenth  century  fanatics,  not  the 
Christian  faith  per  se,  but  some  special  interpretation  there- 
of ;  not  the  philosophy  of  religion,  but  the  inconsequential 
theorems  of  some  sacerdotal  "reformer"  who  has  added 
to  the  world's  discord  by  founding  a  new  "faith."  These 
various  religious  divisions  have  become  little  more  than 
rival  commercial  establishments,  each  peddling  its  own  pe- 
culiar brand  of  saving  grace — warranted  the  only  genuine — 
and  dealing  damnation  round  on  all  dissenters. 

Dogmatism  begat  Doubt,  and  men  began  to  study  the 
Bible,  not  to  search  out  its  wisdom  and  its  truth,  but  its 
folly  and  its  falsehood.  They  represent  the  recoil  from  one 
extreme  to  the  other — from  blind  belief  to  unreasoning 
skepticism,  from  intellectual  slavery  to  liberty  degenerated 
into  license.  Instead  of  judging  the  Bible  by  God  they 
judge  God  by  the  Bible,  and  finding  by  this  ridiculous  for- 
mula that  he  is  little  better  than  a  brutal  maniac,  they  re- 
ject him  altogether  and  try  to  account  for  the  creature  with- 
out the  Creator,  to  explain  an  effect  without  an  efficient 
cause.  If  we  could  but  muzzle  the  dogmatists  Infidelity 
would  quickly  die. 

*     *     * 

The  essentials  of  the  Christian  religion  do  not  depend 
uffbn  the  inerrancy  of  the  Scriptures.  They  do  not  depend 
upon  direct  Revelation  or  the  Miracle,  the  Incarnation  or 
the  Resurrection  of  Jesus  from  the  tomb  of  Joseph  of  Ari- 
mathea.  In  fact,  these  very  "Evidences"  adduced  in  be- 
half of  the  "True  Faith,"  produce  all  the  Doubt  with  which 
it  is  called  to  contend.  Let  us  grant  that  Moses  was  not 
called  to  Sinai's  flaming  crest  to  receive  laws  promulgated 
centuries  before  Joseph  was  carried  a  captive  into  Egypt; 
that  the  Bible  is  but  the  history  of  a  barbarous  people — a 
compendium  of  their  poetry,  religion  and  philosophy;  that 


74  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

the  Incarnation  and  Resurrection  are  but  myths  borrowed 
from  decaying  ethnic  cults,  and  what  have  we  lost  ?  Simply 
indefensible  non-essentials — the  tawdry  garment  with  which 
Ignorance  has  bedecked  her  poor  idea  of  the  Infinite.  What 
matters  it  whether  we  call  our  Creator  Jehovah  or  Jupiter, 
Brahma  of  Buddha?  Who  knoweth  the  name  by  which 
the  Seraphim  address  him?  Why  should  we  care  whether 
Christ  came  into  the  world  with  or  without  the  intervention 
of  an  earthly  father  ?  Are  we  not  all  sons  of  the  Most  High 
God — "bright  sparkles  of  the  Infinite?"  Suppose  that  the 
story  of  the  Incarnation  (older  than  Jerusalem  itself)  be 
literally  true — that  the  Almighty  was  the  immediate  father 
of  Mary's  child:  Is  not  the  birth  of  each  and  all  of  us  as 
much  a  mystery,  as  great  a  "miracle,"  as  tho'  we  sprang 
full-grown  from  the  brow  of  Olympian  love?  Is  it  neces- 
sary that  the  Creator  should  violate  his  own  laws  to  convince 
us  that  he  does  exist?  Is  it  more  wonderful  that  the  sun 
should  stand  still  upon  Gibeon  and  the  moon  in  the  Valley  of 
Ajalon  than  that  the  great  world  should  spin  forever,  bring- 
ing the  night  and  the  morning,  the  seed-time  and  the  har- 
vest? Is  not  a  "miracle" — an  interruption  of  nature's  har- 
mony— rather  calculated  to  make  a  man  of  logical  mind  sus- 
pect that  he  is  the  sport  of  chance  than  believe  himself  the 
especial  care  of  an  Omniscient  Power  that  "Ordereth  all 
things  well?"  When  this  great  globe  hangs  motionless  in 
space  and  the  rotting  dead  arise  in  their  cerements ;  when 
great  multitudes  are  fed  with  a  few  small  fishes  and  virgins 
are  found  with  child,  then,  and  not  till  then,  will  I  relinquish 
faith  in  an  intelligent  Architect  and  acknowledge  lawless 
Force  the  only  Deity. 

Man  is  but  a  microbe  lost  in  immensity.  He  peers  about 
him  and,  by  the  uncertain  light  of  his  small  intelligence, 
reads  (here  a  word,  there  a  line  in  t^he  great  Bookj  of 
Nature,  and,  putting  together  these  scattered  fragments, 
makes  a  "Faith"  which  he  defends  with  fanatical  fervor. 
Dare  to  call  in  question  its  most  inconsequential  thesis 
and  you  are  branded  as  an  heretic;  deny  it  in  to  to  and  you 
are  denounced  as  an  enemy  of  the  Almighty !  The  curses 
of  Brother  Balaam  no  longer  kill  the  body,  but  they  are 
expected  to  play  sad  havoc  with  the  soul !  When  the 
priest  of  Baal  was  en  route  to  Moab's  capitol  for  cursing 
purposes  an  angel  tried  to  withhold  him,  and  even  his 
burro  rebuked  him ;  but  neither  angels  nor  asses  are  exempt 
from  the  law  of  evolution.  Now  when  a  priest  or  preacher 
lets  slip  a  curse  at  those  who  presume  to  question  the  super- 
nal wisdom  of  his  creed,  the  angels  are  supposed  to  flap  their 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  75 

wings  until  heaven  is  filled  with  flying  feathers,  while 
every  blatant  jackass  who  takes  his  spiritual  fodder  at 
that  particular  rick  unbraids  his  ears  and  brays  approv- 
ingly. 


A  TOUCH  OF  HIGH  LIFE. 
THE  PRESS  AND  THE  PARVENUES. 

There  was  a  time  when  the  principal  business  of  the 
American  press  was  the  publication  of  important  news 
and  the  expression  of  opinion  anent  matters  of  moment. 
In  those  days  it  posed  as  a  "public  educator,"  and  the 
self-bestowed  title  was  not  altogether  inappropriate;  but 
it  has,  for  the  most  part,  dropped  its  high  pretensions  and 
is  now  notoriously  "out  for  the  stuff."  The  "great  dailies" 
that  once  went  in  for  glory  and  aspired  to  decency,  that 
"molded  public  opinion"  and  "saved  the  country"  semi- 
occasionally,  are  not  averse  to  accepting  a  fat  fee  for 
championing  some  particular  interest,  regardless  of  the 
general  welfare.  When  it  was  proven  that  the  Galveston- 
Dallas  News  had  sold  its  alleged  editorial  influence,  it 
had  the  audacity  to  defend  the  practice  as  legitimate  jour- 
nalism !  A  majority  of  the  other  morning  papers  of  Texas 
are  not  of  sufficient  importance  to  justify  the  public  in 
keeping  tab  on  them.  If  they  should  succeed  in  selling 
their  souls  for  a  copper  cent  the  public  would  only  pity 
the  purchaser.  When  the  great  dailies  are  not  "pulling 
the  leg"  of  some  corporation  with  a  legislative  axe  to 
grind,  or  inflating  with  a  pneumogastric  bellows  some 
political  boomlet  born  of  a  bank  account,  they  are  court- 
ing the  parvenues — who  are  ever  ready  to  pay  for  pub- 
licity— puffing  society  belles  for  a  consideration,  obse- 
quiously bowing  to  cymling-headed  dudes  with  more  dol- 
lars than  sense  and  gathering  in  the  golden  shekels  from 
every  available  source. 

The  marriage  of  Miss  Anna  Gould — a  very  common- 
place young  person — to  a  French  butterfly  whom  we  have 
no  evidence  ever  did  aught  to  entitle  him  to  existence 
upon  the  earth,  afforded  the  "independent"  American 
press  an  opportunity  to  slop  over  in  great  shape,  and  it 
slopped.  Tons  of  toads  were  eaten  with  evident  relish, 
fulsome  flattery  fairly  overran  the  column  rules,  and  the 
disgusting  tide  of  eulogistic  dish  water  is  now  but  slowly 
ebbing. 


76  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

Some  of  the  bridegroom's  ancestors  had  once  borne 
petty  titles — out  of  which  the  tiers  etat  unceremoniously 
kicked  the  sawdust;  but  the  nice  little  thing,  who  is  of 
less  importance  to  the  world  at  large  than  a  blind  wiggle- 
tail,  still  clings  to  his  title  like  a  spendthrift  to  a  canceled 
pawn  ticket — calls  himself  the  "Count  de  Castellane" — 
and  spends  his  time  painting,  primping  and  puttering 
about  like  a  girl  inoculated  with  the  matrimonial  itch. 
And  the  great  American  dailies,  which  are  supposed  to  be 
the  very  avatars  of  rugged  republicanism,  "dearly  love  a 
lord"  even  tho'  his  title  be  worth  no  more  than  a  draft 
on  a  broken  bank  or  a  cook  book  to  a  starving  hobo.  Miss 
Gould  was  the  rather  stupid  daughter  of  an  American 
sovereign  who  began  life  as  a  map-maker  and  mouse-trap 
architect,  and  who  succeeded,  by  very  questionable  meth- 
ods, in  amassing  an  enormous  fortune.  "Nobility  and 
wealth !"  That  were  indeed  a  combination  sufficient  to 
cause  the  average  American  editor  to  bow  his  face  to  the 
earth  and  lick  boots  until  he  resembled  a  tame  duck  with 
its  mouth  full  of  dried  mud !  The  great  dailies  informed 
us  when  the  little  "Count"  went  to  bed  and  when  he  got 
up.  They  told  us  what  he  ate  for  breakfast  and  how  he 
spent  each  day,  but  even  "journalistic  enterprise"  could 
not  catch  him  in  the  water  closet.  The  press  watched  the 
little  parvenue  who  had  purchased  him  as  narrowly  as  a 
hungry  buzzard  could  a  spoiled  beefsteak.  "It  was  a  love 
match,  pure  and  simple,"  they  informed  the  world — then 
wondered  in  the  next  paragraph  if  she  would  utilize  the 
trousseau  purchased  less  than  a  year  ago,  when  she  was 
engaged  to  wed  some  other  gilly.  But  she  didn't.  She 
could  afford  a  new  one — the  mouse-trap  of  her  sire  had 
been  set  for  suckers  as  well  as  for  ravenous  rodentia.  The 
trousseau  purchased  when  she  made  that  other  "love 
match,  pure  and  simple,"  was  not  nearly  good  enough  in 
which  to  be  tied  fast  to  a  titled  dude — like  a  living'  man 
to  a  dead  mule.  The  cable  was  kept  hot  ordering  new 
"dreams  of  loveliness"  from  the  he-milliners  and  mus- 
tachioed mantua-makers  of  "Paree,"  and  the  great  dailies 
had  to  tell  us  all  about  it — just  how  each  gown  was  cut 
and  what  it  cost,  how  many  suits  of  silk  lingerie  the  bride- 
elect  had  ordered  and  their  colors.  Whether  the  "Count" 
ordered  any  extra  underwear  for  the  occasion  the  news- 
papers neglected  to  state,  which  omission  leads  us  to  sus- 
pect that  he  was  not  addicted  to  the  luxury  of  lingerie  and 
the  expense  of  pajamas  before  he  succeeded  in  trading  his 
Confederate  bond  title  and  mortgaged  chateau  for  fifteen 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  77 

millions  of  Jay  Gould's  ill-got  gold.  The  Associated  Press 
— the  champion  toad-eater  of  the  universe — informed  us, 
however,  that  before  ze  "Count"  could  obtain  a  special 
dispensation  from  his  theological  boss  to  bag  the  eager 
heiress  she  had  to  sign  an  agreement  not  to  interfere  with 
the  religious  faith  of  Frenchy  and  consent  that  their  kids 
be  brought  up  Roman  Catholics.  If  His  Holiness  had 
but  seen  his  niblets  he  would  probably  have  considered 
the  latter  stipulation  entirely  unnecessary — a  work  of 
supererogation,  so  to  speak.  In  about  two  years  we  may 
expect  to  see  the  "Countess"  come  sneaking  back  to  her 
own  countree  in  company  with  a  divorce  case  and  a  tale 
o'  woe  that  would  wring  the  briny  from  a  bust  of  Sitting 
Bull.  It  is  the  usual  way.  She  will  have  the  experience, 
the  "Count"  will  have  the  cash  and  the  newspapers  will 
have  another  scandal  with  whiskers  on  it  that  trail  the 
shrinking  earth. 

*         *         * 

In  the  hurly-burly  of  getting  Miss  Gould  married,  the 
newspapers  rather  neglected  the  divorce  case  of  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Willie  K.  Vanderbilt — only  giving  us  a  column  or  so 
each  day  as  condiment.  But  they  had  been  hammering  at 
it  for  lo !  these  many  moons — had  already  told  us,  several 
times,  all  they  knew  about  it  and  pretty  much  everything 
that  a  morbid  imagination  could  guess  at.  Willie  and  his 
wife  separated  some  time  ago  for  reasons  which  they  suc- 
ceeded in  keeping  within  the  sacred  Vanderbiltian  circle. 
It  was  known  that  Willie  resembled  Solomon  in  that  he 
"loved  many  strange  women,"  and  that  was  usually  sup- 
posed to  constitute  the  casus  belli;  but  Mrs.  Willie  did  not 
trot  to  any  alarming  extent  in  the  same  class  with  Caesar's 
wife.  That  they  quarreled  and  fought  like  some  drunken 
"canary,"  and  his  drab  was  understood ;  but,  by  a  liberal 
use  of  money  they  kept  the  divorce  proceedings  out  of  the 
papers,  so  it  is  not  generally  known  whether  the  separa- 
tion was  caused  by  "incompatibility  of  temper"  or  mutual 
fornication.  The  pot  probably  grew  aweary  of  calling  the 
kettle  black,  and  the  latter  of  animadverting  on  the  com- 
plexion of  its  companion,  so  a  legal  separation  was  se- 
cured and  each  can  now  indulge  in  those  propensities 
peculiar  to  social  swelldom  untrammeled  by  marital  ties. 
Mrs.  Vanderbilt  is  one  of  three  sisters,  each  of  whom 
found  a  husband  an  inconvenient  handicap.  Willie  and 
his  ex-wife,  buoyed  up  by  boodle,  will  continue  to  float 
in  the  creme  de  la  creme — where  adultery  seems  to  be  the 
rule  and  decency  the  exception — and  the  great  dailies  to 


78  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

deluge  a  defenseless  public  with  highfalutin  hogwash 
anent  their  most  inconsequential  doings,  just  as  tho'  the 
common  people  cared  a  tinker's  dam  whether  Mrs.  Van- 
derbilt  was  yum-yumming  with  Alphabet  Belmont  in 
London  while  Willie  was  dallying  with  the  Neustetter 
nymph  du  pave  in  Paris.  Cornelius  Vanderbilt,  a  cross- 
grained  old  curmudgeon  with  his  bump  of  acquisitiveness 
abnormally  developed,  went  into  business  and  prospered. 
Had  he  failed  the  great  dailies  would  trouble  themselves 
but  little  about  his  descendants.  Those  who  got  hanged 
or  divorced  might  get  a  few  lines  gratis,  the  marriage  and 
death  notices  would  cost  the  usual  dollar  per  line — set  in 
solid  nonpareil  and  sandwiched  between  market  reports 
and  pure  patent  medicine  advertisements. 


Jno.  W.  Mackay  is  said  to  have  begun  life  by  peddling 
bock  beer  over  a  pine  bar.  This  occupation  probably  re- 
quired intellectual  effort  to  which  he  found  himself  un- 
equal, for  he  exchanged  the  barkeeper's  apron  for  the 
miner's  overalls ;  the  bung-starter  for  the  quartz  breaker. 
He  was  a  good  fellow  and  the  Goddess  of  Fortune  favored 
him.  When  he  "struck  it  rich"  his  wife,  who  appears  to 
have  been  general  manager  of  a  miners'  hash-factory, 
forthwith  blossomed  out  as  a  "sawsiety"  butterfly.  A 
dinner  of  "biled"  turnips  and  bull  beef,  a  calico  Mother 
Hubbard  and  a  red  bandana  had  formerly  been  the  ultima 
thule  of  her  ambition;  but  with  millions  at  her  command, 
nothing  America  could  produce  satisfied  her  sybaritic 
tastes.  She  obtained  an  establishment  in  "Paree,"  and 
there  she  is  in  the  habit  of  dispensing  Lucullean  luxuries 
to  the  hungry  horde  of  high-toned  hoodlums  who  regard 
a  fresh-picked  American  parvenue  as  an  oasis  in  the 
Sahara  of  semi-starvation.  And  the  daily  press,  which 
would  not  have  given  her  a  two-line  personal  when  she 
was  slinging  hash  and  building  slumgullion,  began  to 
gush  like  a  cask  of  fermenting  molasses,  to  crawl  on  its 
belly  before  the  Mackay  millions.  Mrs.  Mackay  could  not 
purchase  a  poodle  or  old  John  cut  his  corns  without  the 
fact  being  cabled  across  the  ocean  and  peddled  to  eager 
papers  by  the  Associated  Press — accompanied  by  the 
usual  cackle  about  its  own  remarkable  "enterprise." 
Finally  Miss  Mackay  persuaded  papa  to  purchase  a  little 
macaroni  prince  for  her  to  play  with,  and  the  press  pro- 
ceeded to  have  ecstatic  spasms.  The  "Prince  and  Princess 
Colonna"  loomed  up  by  the  page  in  all  important  news- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  79 

papers,  accompanied  by  double-column  before-and-after- 
taking  portraits.  More  space  was  devoted  to  this  foolish 
young  female  and  her  titled  lazzarone  than  to  all  the  au- 
thors and  artists,  inventors  and  educators  upon  the  earth. 
One  would  have  supposed  that  when,  in  consideration  of 
some  millions  of  money,  the  Prince  Colonna  consented  to 
occupy  the  same  bedroom  with  the  American  heiress,  a 
new  and  happier  era  had  dawned  upon  the  human  race — 
that  the  millennium  was  at  hand.  But  when  the  Prince 
had  wrapped  his  scorbutic  diaphragm  around  a  few  square 
feeds — at  his  wife's  expense — he  became  so  vicious  that 
a  self-respecting  dog  could  not  have  endured  him,  and  his 
purchaser  was  compelled  toi  turn  him  loose.  A  few  months 
of  poverty  usually  brings  him  around  all  right,  however, 
and  a  "happy  reunion"  results.  Colonna  would  rather  live 
with  his  plebeian  wife  occasionally  than  clean  cuspidores 
or  manipulate  a  hurdy-gurdy  for  a  living.  Every  time  the 
Prince  patches  up  a  truce — for  the  purpose  of  acquiring 
more  boodle  to  blow  in  on  the  gamblers  and  courtesans  of 
European  capitals — the  American  people  are  compelled  to 
learn  all  about  it,  else  boycott  the  daily  papers.  Just  how 
much  the  Dago  dudelet  has  cost  old  honest  John  will 
probably  never  be  known ;  but  the  latter  has  doubtless 
regretted  a  dozen  times  that  the  law  does  not  allow  him 
to  take  the  scurvy  scion  of  a  titled  but  ignoble  family  out 
behind  the  wood  shed  and  knock  put  his  seldom  brains 
by  slugging  him  beneath  the  coat  tails  with  a  brogan  built 
for  that  especial  business. 


As  these  lines  are  penned  the  readers  of  the  daily  press 
are  getting  another  dose  of  the  disreputable  Mrs.  J.  Cole- 
man  Drayton,  nee  Astor.  Old  John  Jacob  Astor  embarked 
in  the  skin  business  and,  being  an  artist  in  that  particular 
line,  soon  accumulated  enough  money  to  purchase  prop- 
erty in  Manhattan  Island  when  it  was  worth  about  as 
much  as  a  West-Texas  goat  walk.  New  York  grew  into 
a  great  city  and  the  "unearned  increment"  made  the  fam- 
ily he  had  incidentally  founded — while  trading  tin  toma- 
hawks and  firewater  for  the  Aborigines'  furs — as  rich  as  a 
fat  pork  pie.  Three  generations  have  sufficed  to  rub  the 
grease  off  his  gold  and  transform  the  aggressive  effluvia 
of  his  hide  house  into  odors  of  Araby  the  Blest.  J.  Cole- 
man  Drayton  distinguished  himself  by  capturing  one  of 
the  Astor  heiresses,  then  started  in  to  enjoy  life  regardless 
of  expense,  while  the  great  dailies  gushed  and  slopped, 


80  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

toadied  and  tamed.  The  girl  was  no  great  shakes,  but  her 
bank  account  was  a  bute.  J.  Coleman  was  nothing  to 
speak  of,  but  with  an  Astorian  fortune  at  his  fingers'  ends 
he  quickly  became  an  object  of  absorbing  interest  to  our 
"public  educators."  But,  like  Othello,  the  gentleman  who 
parts  his  name  on  the  side  and  his  hair  in  the  middle  be- 
came suspicious.  The  green-eyed  monster  straddled  his 
neck,  rode  him  around  the  donjon  keep  of  the  Astorian 
castle  and  permitted  the  portcullis  to  fall  upon  him  with  a 
dull,  sodden  plunk.  Not  caring  to  "keep  a  cistern  for  foul 
toads  to  knot  and  gender  in,"  he  gave  his  alleged  better 
half  the  bounce.  It  was  expected  that  he'd  borrow  an 
axe  and  carve  a  great  three-cornered  orifice  in  the  anat- 
omy of  her  paramour;  but  he  concluded  to  tell  his  troubles 
to  the  court.  An  opera-bouffe  duel  grew  out  of  the  affair ; 
but  the  cuckold  was  nursing  his  mental  anguish  and  kept 
well  out  of  the  way  while  a  brace  of  society  swells  wound- 
ed the  atmosphere  and  attracted  the  world's  attention  to 
the  frailties  of  his  wife.  Meanwhile  the  press  fairly  stag- 
gered beneath  the  burden  of  the  sensation — a  crisis 
seemed  to  have  suddenly  arisen  in  the  history  of  the 
human  race !  We  were  almost  led  to  expect  that  the 
world  would  cease  revolving  and  the  entire  solar  system 
slip  an  eccentric  because  a  female  descendant  of  an  igno- 
rant old  fur  trader  had  been  dallying  with  the  dudes — 
had  strayed  'from  home  in  her  reckless  pursuit  of  happi- 
ness. 

And  so  it  goes.  The  daily  press  is  ever  at  the  feet  of 
the  parvenues,  always  cringing  before  the  Golden  Calf. 
Its  boasted  "backbone"  is  made  of  gutta-percha,  it  is  as 
deficient  in  moral  force  as  a  mangy  yellow  fice.  It  has 
degenerated  from  a  public  educator  into  a  professional 
scandal-monger,  from  an  inculcator  of  independent  Amer- 
ican manhood  to  a  pitiful  flunkey  that  serves  for  hire, 
panders  to  a  vitiated  public  taste  for  stray  pennies,  flatters 
Mammon  for  its  fodder  and  slobbers  over  everything  with 
a  title  simply  because  it  has  no  better  sense.  That  is 
strong  language ;  but  it  will  find  an  echo  in  the  heart  of 
this  mighty  Yankee  nation — composed,  not  of  princes  and 
pimps,  lords  and  lackeys,  counts  and  cuckolds,  but  of 
American  sovereigns  who  do  not  depend  upon  boodle  to 
make  them  respectable ;  who  are  superior,  morally,  men- 
tally and  physically,  to  the  very  kings  of  foreign  coun- 
tries. The  proudest  European  nobleman  is  a  Subject ;  the 
humblest  American  citizen  is  a  Sovereign  !  The  American 
who  cannot  understand  that  fact — whether  "able  editor" 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  81 

of  a  great  daily  or  heiress  seeking  social  distinction — 
should  be  castrated  or  killed.  We  are  breeding  entirely 
too  many  title-worshippers,  toadies  and  intellectual  tom- 
tits— too  few  self-reliant,  manly  men,  who  realize  that 
below  them  are  all  things,  animate  and  inanimate,  above 
them  only  the  eternal  King  of  kings. 


EVOLUTION  OR  REVOLUTION. 
THE  PLUTOCRAT  AND  THE  PAUPER. 

"For  Christ's  sake,  Cap,  give  me  the  price  of  a  sand- 
wich !" 

I  stopped  and  surveyed  the  speaker,  not  because  the 
request  was  unusual,  but  because  the  applicant  for  aid  had 
not  acquired  the  beggar's  whine.  He  was  a  large,  power- 
ful man,  evidently  a  mechanic,  for  every  trade  leaves  its 
peculiar  stamp  upon  its  followers. 

"Why  should  I  give  you  a  dime?  You  are  far  more 
able  to  work  than  I.  A  man  with  half  your  strength 
should  be  ashamed  to  beg." 

"Work  ?"  he  retorted,  bitterly.  "Give  me  a  job — at  any- 
thing— and  see  if  I  do  not  prove  myself  a  man." 

"But  I  have  nothing  for  you  to  do.*' 

"A  dozen  men  have  told  me  that  to-day.  You  sneer  at 
me  because  I  do  not  earn  the  bread  I  eat,  yet  decline  to 
give  me  an  opportunity  to  do  so." 

I  steered  him  against  a  lunch  counter  and  watched  him 
chisel  desolation  into  a  silver  dollar,  then  listened  to  his 
story — one  that  I  had  heard  a  hundred  times  within  the 
year.  Thrown  out  of  employment  by  the  business  depres- 
sion, he  had  tramped  in  search  of  work  until  he. found 
himself  penniless,  starving  in  the  streets  of  a  strange  city. 
He  handed  me  a  letter,  dated  St.  Louis,  written  by  his 
wife.  Some  of  the  words  were  misspelled  and  the  bad 
chirography  was  blotted  as  if  by  falling  tears,  but  it 
breathed  the  spirit  of  a  Roman  matron,  of  a  Spartan 
mother.  Both  the  children  were  ill.  She  had  obtained  a 
little  sewing  and  provided  food  and  some  medicine,  but 
two  months'  rent  were  due  and  the  landlord  would  turn 
them  out  unless  it  was  promptly  paid.  She  would  do  the 
best  she  could,  and  knew  that  her  husband  would  do  the 
same.  Then  thro'  the  blinding  tears  came  a  flash  of  nether 
fire.  Transformed  into  respectable  English  it  read : 


82  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

"Were  I  a  man  I  would  not  tramp  from  city  to  city 
begging  employment  only  to  be  refused.  Were  I  a  man 
I  would  not  see  my  babies  starve  while  people  are  piling 
up  millions  of  money  which  they  can  never  need.  In  this 
country  there  should  be  an  opportunity  for  every  man  to 
make  a  living.  Were  I  a  man  I  would  make  an  effort  to 
release  myself  and  my  unhappy  fellows  from  this  brutal 
industrial  bondage,  this  chronic  pauperism —  if  it  cost  my 
life.  I  have  two  sons,  whom  God  knows  I  do  dearly  love ; 
but  I  would  consecrate  them  to  the  holy  cause  of  human 
liberty  if  I  knew  they  would  perish  on  the  scaffold.  I 
would  rather  see  them  die  like  dogs  than  live  like  slaves." 

He  sat  a  long  time  silent  after  returning  the  letter  to  his 
pocket,  then  said  as  tho'  speaking  to  himself : 

"I  wonder  if  the  rich  people  ever  pause  to  reflect  that 
there's  a  million  brawny  men  in  my  condition  to-night — 
a  million  men  who  only  lack  a  leader?  I  wonder  if  they 
think  we'll  stand  this  kind  o'  thing  forever?  Don't  talk 
to  me  about  patriotism,"  he  interrupted,  fiercely.  "No 
man  can  be  a  patriot  on  an  empty  stomach !  Why  should 
I  care  for  the  preservation  of  a  government  of,  for  and 
by  the  plutocrat?  Let  it  go  to  the  devil  across  lots !  D — n 
a  flag  beneath  which  a  competent  and  industrious  me- 
chanic cannot  make  a  living.  Anarchy?  Is  anarchy  worse 
than  starvation?  When  conditions  become  such  that  a 
workingman  is  half  the  time  an  ill-fed  serf,  and  the  other 
half  a  wretched  vagabond,  he's  ready  for  a  change  of  any 
kind — by  any  means.  I  am  supposed  to  be  entitled  to 
'Life,  Liberty  and  the  Pursuit  of  Happiness/  I  have  Lib- 
erty— to  starve — and  I  can  pursue  Happiness — or  rain- 
bows— to  my  heart's  content.  There's  absolutely  no  law 
prohibiting  my  using  the  horns  of  the  moon  for  a  hat- 
rack  if  I  feel  so  disposed !" 


The  optimists  who  are  depending  upon  the  "conserva- 
tism" of  the  American  people  to  maintain  intact  our 
political  and  industrial  systems ;  who  proclaim  that  the 
present  too  apparent  spirit  of  unrest  is  but  the  ephemeral 
effect  of  a  few  professional  agitators,  are  of  the  same 
myopic  brood  as  those  French  aristocrats  who  declared 
that  all  was  well  until  the  crust  over  the  tartarean  fires — 
steadily  eaten  away  from  beneath,  steadily  hammered 
upon  from  above — gave  way  with  a  crash  like  the  crack 
of  doom  and  that  fair  land  was  transformed  as  if  by*  in- 
fernal magic  into  a  high-flaming  vortex  of  chaos,  engulf- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  83 

ing  all  forms  and  formulas,  threatening  the  civilization  of 
a  world. 

"After  us  the  deluge!"  cried  those  court  parasites,  who, 
with  more  understanding  than  their  fellows,  read  aright  the 
mene,  mene,  tekel  upharsin  traced  upon  the  walls  of  royalty. 
But  the  deluge  waited  not  upon  their  convenience.  Like 
another  prodigy  of  Death  gendered  by  Pride  in  the  womb 
of  Sin,  it  burst  forth  to  appall  the  world.  But  the  American 
multi-millionaires  mock  at  the  ''deluge" — can  in  nowise  un- 
derstand how  it  were  possible  for  the  thin  crust  that  holds 
in  thrall  the  fierce  Gehenna  fires  to  give  'way  beneath  their 
feet,  dance  they  upon  it  never  so  hard. 

The  American  nation  is  trembling  on  the  verge  of  an  in- 
dustrial revolution — a  revolution  that  is  inevitable;  that  will 
come  peaceably  if  it  can,  forcibly  if  it  must.  So  ripe  are  the 
American  workingmen  for  revolt  against  the  existing  order 
of  things;  so  galled  are  they  by  the  heavy  yoke  laid  upon 
them;  so  desperate  have  they  become  that  it  but  needs  a 
strong  man  to  organize  and  lead  them,  and  our  present  in- 
dustrial system — perhaps  our  political,  also — would  crumble 
like  an  eggshell  in  the  grip  of  an  angry  Titan. 

Nor  is  the  dissatisfaction  confined  to  the  industrial  class, 
the  farmer,  that  Atlas  upon  whose  broad  shoulders  the  great 
world  rests,  is  in  full  sympathy  with  every  attack  made  upon 
the  Cormorant  by  the  Commune.  While  not  ready  for  a 
revolution  by  force,  he  would  not  take  up  arms  in  defense  of 
the  prescriptive  rights  of  the  plutocrat  from  the  assaults  of 
the  proletariat.  Yet  the  American  press  proclaims  that  all 
is  well!  The  "able  editor"  looks  into  his  leather  spectacles 
— free  trade  or  high  tariff  brand — and  with  owl-like  gravity 
announces  that  if  the  import  tax  on  putty  be  increased  some- 
what, or  fiddle-strings  be  placed  on  the  free  list,  the  Ameri- 
can mechanic  will  have  money  to  throw  at  the  birds — that 
mortgages  and  mendicancy  will  pass  like  a  hideous  night- 
mare, and  the  farmer  gaily  bestride  his  sulky  plow  attired 
like  unto  Solomon  in  all  his  glory. 


What  is  wrong?  In  God's  name,  what  is  right?  Here 
we  have  the  most  fertile  land  upon  the  globe,  the  best  sup- 
plied with  all  things  necessary  to  a  prosperous  people.  Our 
resources  are  not  half  developed ;  there  is  .no  dearth  of  cap- 
ital; our  working  people  are  the  most  intelligent,  energetic 
and  capable  upon  which  the  sun  ever  shone.  Man  for  man 
the  world  never  contained  their  equal.  Their  productive 
capability  is  the  marvel  even  of  this  age  of  industrial  mir- 


84  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

acles.  And  yet,  with  every  nerve  strained  to  its  utmost  ten- 
sion ;  toiling,  saving — at  very  death-grips  with  destiny — 
they  are  sinking  year  by  year  deeper  into  the  Slough  of 
Despond — into  that  most  frightful  of  all  Gehennas,  the  hell 
of  want ! 

Nor  is  this  all.  While  those  who  toil  are  but  fighting  a 
losing  battle — wearing  out  hand  and  heart  and  brain  for  a 
crust  that  becomes  ever  scantier,  ever  more  bitter — there  are 
thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  who  cannot  even  obtain 
the  poor  privilege  of  tramping  in  this  brutal  tread-mill,  but 
must  stand  with  folded  arms  and  starve,  else  beg  or  steal. 
All  this  might  be  borne — would  be  endured  with  heroic  for- 
titude— if  such  were  the  lot  of  all ;  but  while  the  opportunity 
to  wear  out  one's  strength  for  a  bare  existence  is  becoming 
ever  more  a  privilege  to  be  grateful  for,  we  are  making  mil- 
lionaires by  the  hundreds.  While  the  many  battle  desper- 
ately for  life,  the  few  are  piling  up  fortunes  beside  which  the 
famed  wealth  of  ancient  Lydia's  kings  were  but  a  beggar's 
patrimony.  The  employer  is  becoming  ever  more  an  auto- 
crat, the  employee  ever  more  dependent  upon  his  good 
pleasure  for  the  poor  privilege  of  existing  upon  the  earth. 


To  say  that  the  "conservatism"  of  the  American  working- 
man  will  cause  him  to  patiently  endure  all  this  is  to  brand 
him  a  spiritless  slave,  deserving  not  only  slavery,  but  the 
shackles  and  the  knout.  He  will  not  endure  it  much 
longer ,  and  when  his  patience  reaches  its  utmost  limit — 
when  he  tires  of  filling  his  belly  with  the  East  wind  sup- 
plied him  in  such,  plentitude  by  aspiring  politicians  and 
"able  editors,"  look  ye  to  see  something  break. 


The  problems  for  our  statesmen  to  solve  are,  First,  how 
to  insure  to  every  person  able  and  willing  to  work  an  op- 
portunity to  earn  an  honest  livelihood;  Second,  to  effect  a 
more  equitable  distribution  of  the  wealth  created  among  the 
factors  engaged  in  its  production.  All  other  problems  now 
engaging  the  attention  of  publicists  sink  into  insignificance 
beside  these.  They  are  to  practical  statecraft  what  the  im- 
mortality of  the  soul  is  to  theology.  They  must  be  solved ; 
at  least,  some  progress  must  be  made  in  that  direction  or 
force  will  ere  long  attempt  it.  The  trouble  with  such  con- 
vulsions is  that  they  invariably  produce  temporary  evil,  but 
do  not  always  compensate  it  with  permanent  good.  They 
are  a  kind  of  social  mania  a  polu,  racking  the  whole  organ- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  85 

ism,  debilitating  it — good  chiefly  as  frightful  examples  of 
what  evil  customs  lead  to. 

To  diagnose  the  disease  and  prescribe  a  remedy  were  no 
easy  task.  There  is  infinitely  more  the  matter  than  a  mal- 
adjustment of  the  tariff,  inflated  railway  stocks  or  a  dearth 
of  white  dollars.  It  is  a  most  difficult,  a  wonderfully  intri- 
cate problem — one  entirely  without  precedent.  The  rapid 
development  of  America;  the  still  more  remarkable  ad- 
vancement in  the  science  of  mechanics,  conjoined  to  a  po- 
litical organism  not  yet  fully  developed,  but  half  under- 
stood, yet  marking  an  epoch  in  man's  social  progress ;  com- 
mercial customs  of  by-gone  days  surviving  in  the  midst  of 
much  that  is  new — really  when  you  come  to  think  of  it  you 
may  well  wonder  that  we  have  got  thus  far  without  more 
than  one  great  convulsion !  Clearly  it  is  no  place  for  cathol- 
icons. 

That  a  comparatively  small  class  of  men  are  absorbing 
the  wealth  of  the  country  as  fast  as  it  is  produced,  leaving 
to  those  who  create  it  scarce  a  bare  subsistence,  is  patent 
to  all :  that  the  vast  body  of  the  people,  clothed  with  political 
power  and  imbued  "with  the  spirit  of  "equality,"  will  not 
permit  such  conditions  to  long  continue,  any  thoughtful 
man  will  concede.  Even  in  European  countries,  where  the 
working  people  have  come  to  regard  privileged  classes  as  a 
matter  of  course,  there  are  mutterings  of  a  coming  storm 
that  will  only  gather  fresh  terrors  by  delay.  In  Europe  the 
change  will  probably  be  wrought  by  revolution ;  in  America 
it  may  be  achieved  by  peaceful  evolution  if  the  monied  aris- 
tocracy does  not,  with  its  checks  and  repressions — with  its 
corrupted  judiciary,  purchased  legislators  and  obsequious 
press — drive  a  people,  already  sorely  vexed,  to  unreasoning 
madness. 


What  shall  we  do?  We  must  avoid  the  two  extremes — 
that  of  the  radical  reformer  and  the  apostle  of  laissez  faire. 
We  will  find  a  middle  course  safest  and  best — will  need  to 
proceed  with  caution,  but  by  no  means  with  cowardice.  The 
politico-economic  school  that  would  at  once  change  the  ex- 
isting order  of  things  "with  as  much  sang-froid  as  a  miller 
substitutes  steam  for  water-power  forgets  that  society  is  not 
a  machine ;  that  it  was  not  made  to  order  like  a  newspaper 
editorial,  and  that  to  attempt  by  a  radical  process  to  make 
it  other  than  what  it  is — to  change  its  genius  arbitrarily — 
were  as  fatuous  as  trying  to  transform  a  wolf  into  a  watch- 
dog by  a  chemical  process  or  surgical  operation.  But  while 


86  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

the  radical  "reformer" — the  man  who  would  ignore  the  les- 
sons of  history  and  launch  boldly  out  upon  the  tempestuous 
sea  of  experimentalism — is  one  dangerous  extreme,  we  must 
remember  that  it  is  not  the  only  one.  In  avoiding  Scylla 
we  must  not  forget  Charybdis.  If  we  are  to  look  ever  to 
the  past,  to  make  no  experiments,  to  become  the  bond- 
slaves of  precedent,  then  progress  is  at  an  end  and  society 
must  petrify,  retrograde  or  consume  itself  in  fierce  fire 
"whirlwinds. 

When  the  American  people  emancipate  themselves  from 
party-slavery — than  which  there  is  none  more  debasing; 
when  they  cease  to  fight  the  battles  of  ambitious  place-hunt- 
ers and  begin  in  true  earnest  to  fight  their  own,  then,  and 
not  till  then,  will  the  faults  of  our  social  organism  be  rapidly 
reduced  to  the  minimum.  When  the  common  people  of 
this  country  decline  to  be  divided  into  two  or  more  hostile 
camps  by  "issues"  carefully  concocted  by  political  harle- 
quins, then  will  the  combined  wisdom,  purified  of  partisan 
prejudice,  evolve  the  best  possible  national  policy. 

How  many  of  the  hard-working  people  of  this  nation  who 
are  now  assiduously  assailing  or  defending  the  dogma  of 
protection  or  free  trade — or  any  other  of  the  many  "issues" 
evolved  from  time  to  time  by  professional  politicians  as  a 
kind  of  Pegasus  upon  which  they  fondly  hope  to  ride  into 
power — ever  carefully  considered  the  question  in  all  its 
bearings ;  studied  it  from  a  national,  sectional  or  even  indi- 
vidual standpoint.  Questions  upon  which  Adam  Smith  and 
Auguste  Compte,  Jefferson  and  Hamilton  disagreed,  are 
settled  by  the  dicta  of  a  partisan  convention — composed 
chiefly  of  political  hacks  and  irresponsible  hoodlums — with 
less  trouble  than  a  colored  wench  selects  a  calico  gown. 

The  American  people,  as  P.  T.  Barnuni  long  ago  point- 
jed  out,  have  a  weakness  for  humbugs.  They  are  the 
natural  prey  of  the  charlatan,  and  in  nothing  more  so  than 
in  matters  political.  Despite  their  boasted  intelligence, 
they  will  follow  with  a  trust  that  partakes  of  the  pathetic 
the  mountebank  who  can  perform  the  most  sleight-of-hand 
tricks,  the  demagogue  who  can  make  the  most  noise. 
They  think,  but  are  too  busy  or  indifferent  to  think 
deeply,  to  reason  closely.  They  "jump  at  conclusions/' 
assert  their  correctness  stubbornly  and  prove  the  courage 
of  their  convictions  by  their  ballots.  They  demonstrate 
their  "independence"  by  choosing  their  political  fetich, 
their  confidence  in  the  infallibility  of  their  judgment  by 
worshiping  it  blindly.  Herein  lies  the  chief  danger — dan- 
ger that  the  American  workingman  will  follow  this  or 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  87 

that  ignis-fatuus,  hoping  thereby  to  find  a  shorter  north- 
west passage  to  impossible  spice  islands,  until  poverty 
has  degraded  him  from  a  self-respecting  sovereign  into^a 
volcanic  sans  culotte;  until  he  loses  hope  of  bettering  his 
condition  by  whereases,  resolutions,  trades-unions,  acts  of 
Congress,  etc.,  and,  like  another  blind  and  desperate  Sam- 
son, lays  his  brawny  hands  upon  the  pillars  of  the  temple 
and  pulls  it  down  about  his  ears. 


SPEAKING    OF    GALL. 

Gall  is  a  bitter  subject,  and  I  shall  waste  no  time  select- 
ing sweet  words  in  which  to  handle  it.  There's  no  sur- 
plus of  sweet  words  in  my  vocabulary  anyhow.  I  have 
never  yet  been  able  to  rent  my  mouth  for  a  taffy  mill. 
Webster  gives  several  definitions  of  Gall;  but  the  good 
old  etymologist  was  gathered  to  his  fathers  long  before 
the  word  attained  its  full  development  and  assumed  an 
honored  place  in  the  slang  vernacular  of  the  day.  It  was 
needed.  It  fills  what  editors  sometimes  call  "a  long-felt 
want."  Gall  is  sublimated  audacity,  transcendent  impu- 
dence, immaculate  nerve,  triple-plated  cheek,  brass  in 
solid  slugs.  It  is  what  enables  a  man  to  borrow  five  dol- 
lars of  you,  forget  to  repay  it,  then  touch  you  for  twenty 
more.  It  is  what  makes  it  possible  for  a  woman  to  bor- 
rbw  her  neighbor's  best  bonnet,  then  complain  because 
it  isn't  the  latest  style  or  doesn't  suit  her  particular  type 
of  beauty.  It  is  what  causes  people  to  pour  their  troubles 
into  the  ears  of  passing  acquaintances  instead  of  reserving 
them  for  home  consumption.  It  is  what  makes  a  man 
aspire  to  the  governorship,  or  to  air  his  asininity  in  the 
Congress  of  the  United  States  when  he  should  be  fiddling 
on  a  stick  of  cordwood  with  an  able-bodied  buck-saw.  It 
is  what  leads  a  feather-headed  fop,  with  no  fortune  but 
his  folly,  no  prospects  but  poverty — who  lacks  business 
ability  to  find  bread  for  himself — to  mention  marriage  to 
a  young  lady  reared  in  luxury,  to  ask  her  to  leave  the 
house  of  her  father  and  help  him  fill  the  land  with  fools. 
Gall  is  what  spoils  so  many  good  ditchers  and  delvers  to 
make  peanut  politicians  and  putty-headed  professional 
men.  It  is  what  puts  so  many  men  in  the  pulpit  who 
could  serve  their  Saviour  much  better  planting  the  mild- 
eyed  potato  or  harvesting  the  useful  hoop-pole.  It  is  what 
causes  so  many  young  ladies  to  rush  into  literature  in- 


88  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

stead  of  the  laundry — to  become  poets  of  passion  instead 
of  authors  of  pie. 

Gall  is  a  very  common  ailment.  In  fact,  a  man^  with- 
out a  liberal  supply  of  it  is  likely  to  be  as  lonesome  in  this 
land  as  a  consistent  Christian  at  a  modern  camp-meeting, 
or  a  gold-bug  Democrat  in  Texas.  Nearly  everybody  has 
it  and  is  actually  proud  of  it.  When  a  young  man  is  first 
afflicted  with  the  tender  passion ;  when  he  is  in  the  throes 
of  the  mysterious  mental  aberration  that  would  cause  him 
to  climb  a  mesquite  bush  and  lasso  the  moon  for  his 
inamorata  if  she  chanced  to  admire  it,  he  is  apt  to  think 
it  love  that  makes  the  world  go  round.  Later  he  learns 
that  Gall  is  the  social  dynamics — the  force  that  causes 
humanity  to  arise  and  hump  itself. 

Gall  has  got  the  world  grabbed.  Politics  is  now  a  high- 
class  play,  whose  pawns  are  power  and  plunder;  business 
is  becoming  but  a  gouge-game  wherein  success  hallows 
any  means.  Our  mighty  men  are  our  most  successful 
marauders ;  our  social  favorites  minister  in  the  temple  of 
Mammon,  our  pillar  of  cloud  by  day  and  of  fire  by  night 
the  follies  and  foibles  of  the  "Four  Hundred,"  our  God  the 
Golden  Calf.  The  standard  by  which  society  now  meas- 
ures men  is  the  purse ;  that  by  which  it  gauges  greatness 
the  volume  of  foolish  sound  which  the  aspirant  for  im- 
mortal honors  succeeds  in  setting  afloat,  little  caring 
whether  it  be  such  celestial  harp  music  as  caused  Thebe's 
walls  to  rise,  or  the  discordant  bray  of  the  ram's  horn 
which  made  Jericho's  to  fall.  This  century,  which  proudly 
boasts  itself  "heir  to  all  the  ages  and  foremost  in  the  files 
of  time,"  doffs  its  beaver  to  brazen  effrontery,  burns  its 
sweetest  incense  on  the  unhallowed  shrine  of  pompous 
humbuggery,  while  modest  merit  is  in  a  more  pitiable 
predicament  than  the  traditional  tomcat  in  Tartarus  with- 
out teeth  or  toenails. 

We  make  manifest  our  immeasureable  Gall  by  pro- 
claiming from  the  housetops  that,  of  all  the  ages  which 
have  passed  o'er  'the  hoary  head  of  Mother  Earth,  the 
present  stands  pre-eminent;  that  of  all  the  numberless 
cycles  of  Time's  mighty  pageant  there  was  none  like  unto 
it — no,  not  one.  And  I  sincerely  hope  there  wasn't.  Per- 
haps that  which  induced  the  Deity  to  repent  him  that  he 
had  madej  man  and  send  a  deluge  to  soak  some  of  the 
devilment  out  of  him,  was  the  nearest  approach  to  it.  We 
imagine  that  because  we  have  the  electric  telegraph  and 
the  nickel-plated  dude,  the  printing  press  and  the  cam- 
paign lie,  the  locomotive  and  the  scandal  in  high  life ;  that 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  89 

because  v/e  now  roast  our  political  opponent  instead  of 
the  guileless  young  missionary,  and  rob  our  friends  by 
secret  fraud  instead  of  despoiling  our  foes  by  open  force, 
that  we  are  the  people  par-excellence  and  the  Lord  must 
be  proud  of  us. 

Progress  and  improvement  are  not  always  synonyms.  A 
people  may  grow  in  Gall  instead  of  grace.  I  measure  a 
century  by  its  men  rather  than  by  its  machines,  and  we 
have  not,  since  civilization  took  its  boasted  leap  forward, 
produced  a  Socrates  or  a  Shakespeare,  a  Phidias  or  an 
Angelo,  a  Confucius  or  a  Christ.  This  century  runs 
chiefly  to  Talmages  and  Deacon  Twogoods,  pauper  dukes 
and  divorce  courts — intellectual  soup  and  silk  lingerie. 


The  poets  no  longer  sing  of  the  immortal  gods,  of  war 
and  sacrifice,  while  the  flame  mounts  to  manhood's  check, 
red  as  the  fires  of  Troy :  They  twitter  of  lovies  and  dov- 
ies,  of  posies  and  goose-liver  pie,  while  pretty  men  ap- 
plaud and  sentimental  maids  get  moonsick.  Cincinnatus 
no  longer  waits  for  the  office  to  seek  the  man :  He  sells 
his  brace  of  bullocks  and  buys  a  political  boom.  No  more 
the  Spartan  mother  gives  her  long  black  hair  for  bow- 
strings: She  blondines  it,  paints,  powders  and  tries  to 
pass  as  the  younger  sister  of  her  eldest  daughter.  The 
Norse  viking  no  longer  plows  the  unknown  wave,  his 
heart  wilder  than  the  wat'ry  waste,  his  arm  stronger  than 
tempered  steel:  He  comes  to  America  and  starts  a  sa- 
loon. No  more  the  untamed  Irish  king  caroms  on  the 
Saxon  invader  with  a  seasoned  shillalah :  He  gets  on  the 
police  force  and  helps  "run  the  machine,"  or  clubs  the 
head  off  the  harmless  married  man  who  won't  go  home 
till  morning.  In  these  degenerate  days  the  philosopher 
retires  not  to  the  desert,  and  there,  by  meditation  most 
profound,  wrings  from  the  secret  treasure-house  of  his  own 
superior  soul,  jewels  to  adorn  his  age  and  enrich  the 
world:  He  mixes  an  impossible  plot  with  a  little  pessimism, 
adds  a  dude  and  a  woman  whose  moral  character  has  seen 
better  days,  spills  the  nauseous  compound  on  the  public 
as  a  "philosophical  novel"  and  works  <the  press  for  puffs. 
Indeed  we're  progressing;  going  onward  and  upward — 
like  the  belled  buzzard  dodging  a  divorce  scandal.  Greece 
had  her  Pericles,  but  it  was  left  for  us  to  produce  a  Park- 
hurst.  Rome  had  her  Cicero  and  her  Caesar,  but  was  never 
equal  to  a  Culberson  or  a  Corbett.  The  princes  of  old  con- 
quered the  earth,  but  the  modern  plutocrats  put  a  mort- 


90  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

gage  on  it.  Cleopatra  drank  pearls  dissolved  in  wine,  but 
whisky  straight  is  said  to  be  good  enough  for  some  of  her 
successors.  Samson  slew  the  Philistines  with  a  jawbone  of 
an  ass ;  but  a  modern  politician,  employing  the  self-same 
weapon,  would  have  got  'em  to  elect  him  governor.  We've 
got  no  Helen  of  Troy;  but  our  "Hell'n  Blazes"  is  a  bird 
o'  the  same  feather.  We've  got  to  yield  the  palm  in  poetry 
and  philosophy,  art  and  architecture;  but  when  it  comes 
to  building  political  platforms  that  straddle  every  import- 
ant issue  and  slinging  princely  style  on  a  pauper  income 
we're  out  of  sight. 

How  can  the  acorn  become  a  mighty  forest  monarch  if 
planted  in  a  pint  pot  and  crossed  with  a  fuzzy-wuzzy  chrys- 
anthemum? How  can  the  Numidian  lion's  whelp  become 
a  king  of  beasts  if  reared  in  a  cage  and  fed  on  cold  potatoes, 
muzzled  and  made  to  dance  to  popular  music?  How  can 
the  superior  soul  expand  until  it  becomes  all-embracing, 
god-like,  a  universe  in  itself,  in  which  rings  sweet  sphere- 
music  and  rolls  Jovinian  thunder — in  which  blazes  true 
Promethean  fire  instead  of  smoulders  the  sulphurous  caloric 
of  the  nether  world — when  its  metes  and  bounds  are  irre- 
vocably fixed  for  it — when  it  can  only  grow  in  certain  pre- 
scribed directions,  painfully  mapped  out  for  it  by  bumptious 
pismires  who  imagine  that  their  little  heads  constitute  the  in- 
tellectual Cosmos? 


Hamlet,  Prince  of  Denmark,  lamented  that  he  lacked 
Gall;  but  the  melancholy  Dane  was  dead  years  before  the 
present  generation  of  titled  snobs  appeared  upon  the  scene. 
None  of  the  princes  or  dukes  of  the  present  day  appear  to  be 
short  on  Gall ;  none  of  the  nobility  seem  to  be  suffering  for 
lack  of  it.  Not  long  ago  a  little  Duke  who  owes  his  title 
to  the  fact  that  his  great-grand-aunt  was  the  paramour  of  a 
half-wit  prince,  kindly  condescended  to  marry  an  American 
girl  to  recoup  his  failing  fortunes.  A  little  French  guy 
whose  brains  are  worth  about  two  cents  a  pound — for  soap- 
grease — put  up  a  Confederate-bond  title  for  the  highest  bid- 
der and  was  bought  in  like  a  hairless  Mexican  pup  by  an 
American  plutocrat.  Now  half-a-dozen  more  little  pauper 
princelings  and  decadent  dukelings  are  trying  to  trade  their 
worthless  coronets  for  American  cash.  But  the  fact  that 
many  a  man  boasting  of  his  American  sovereignty  will  dick- 
er with  a  titled  young  duke,  instead  of  using  the  forecastle 
of  a  No.  9  foot  to  drive  his  spinal  column  up  thro'  his  plug- 
hat  like  a  presidential  lightning-rod;  will  actually  purchase 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  91 

for  his  daughter  some  disgusting  little  title  upon  which  rests 
the  fateful  bar-sinister  of  a  woman?s  shame,  and  is  encum- 
bered by  a  dizzy  young  dude,  too  lazy  to  work  and  too  cow- 
ardly to  steal — too  everlastingly  "ornery"  to  raise  a  respect- 
able crop  of  wild  oats — proves  that  the  young  lollipop  lord- 
lings  haven't  a  monopoly  of  the  Gall  of  the  Globe. 


A  most  shameful  exhibition  of  Gall  is  the  practice  now 
coming  into  vogue  with  certain  society  ladies  of  encourag- 
ing newspapers  to  puff  their  charms — even  paying  them  so 
much  a  line  for  fulsome  praise.  Not  a  few  metropolitan 
papers  reap  a  handsome  profit  by  puffing  society  buds 
whom  their  fond  parents  are  eager  to  place  on  the  matri- 
monial market,  hoping  that  they  will  "make  good 
matches ;"  in  other  words,  that  they  will  marry  money — 
its  possessors  being  thrown  in  as  pelon.  Even  married 
women,  who  are  long  on  shekels  but  short  on  sense,  some- 
times pay  big  prices  to  get  their  portraits  in  the  public 
prints — accompanied  by  puffs  that  would  give  a  buzzard 
a  bilious  attack. 

But  the  Gall  of  the  girl  who  puts  her  picture  in  the  pa- 
pers, accompanied  by  a  paid  puff  of  her  "purty,"  scarce 
equals  that  of  the  conceited  maid  who  imagines  she  has 
only  to  look  at  a  man  and  giggle  a  few  times  to  "mash 
him  cold" — to  get  his  palpitating  heart  on  a  buckskin 
string  and  swing  it  hither-and-yon  at  pleasure.  How  the 
great  he-world  does  suffer  at  the  hands  of  those  heartless 
young  coquettes — if  half  it  tells  'em  be  true!  David  said 
in  his  haste  that  all  men  are  liars.  And  had  he  carefully 
considered  the  matter  he  would  have  come  to  the  same 
conclusion.  Washington  may  have  told  his  father  the 
truth  about  that  cherry-tree ;  but  later  in  life  he  became 
entirely  too  popular  with  the  ladies  for  a  man  unable  to  lie. 

lit  is  natural  for  men  to  pay  court  to  a  pretty  woman 
as  for  flies  to  buzz  about  a  molasses  barrel ;  but  not  every 
fly  that  buzzes  expects  to  get  stuck,  I  beg  to  state.  The 
man  who  doesn't  tell  every  woman  who  will  listen  to  him 
— excepting,  perhaps,  his  wife — that  she's  pretty  as  a  peri, 
even  tho'  she  be  homely  enough  to  frighten  a  mugwump 
out  of  a  fat  federal  office ;  that  she's  got  his  heart  grabbed ; 
that  he  lives  only  in  the  studied  sunshine  of  her  store- 
teeth  smile  and  is  hungering  for  an  opportunity  to  die  for 
her  dear  sake — well,  he's  an  angel,  and  he-seraphs  are 
almighty  scarce  I  beg  of  you  to  believe.  Since  Adonis  died 
and  Joseph  was  gathered  to  his  fathers  none  have  appeared 


92  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST. 

that  I  am  aware  of.  These  young  gentlemen  were  all 
right,  I  suppose ;  but  I'd  like  to  see  either  of  them  get 
elected  now-a-days  on  the  Democratic  ticket  in  Texas. 
But  feminine  conceit,  fed  on  flattery,  were  as  milk-shake 
unto  mescal,  as  a  kiss  by  mail  to  one  by  moonlight  com- 
pared with  the  insufferable  egotism  of  the  "pretty  man" 
who  puts  his  moustache  up  in  curl-papers  and  perfumes 
his  pompadour ;  who  primps  and  postures  before  an  amor- 
ous looking-glass  and  imagines  that  all  Eve's  daughters 
are  trying  to  abduct  him.  Whenever  I  meet  one  of  these 
male  irresistibles  I'm  forcibly  reminded  that  the  Almighty 
made  man  out  of  mud — and  not  very  good  mud  at  that. 
The  two-legged  he-thing  who  makes  a  clothes-horse  of 
himself  and  poses  on  the  street-corner  perfumed  like  an 
emancipation  day  picnic ;  who  ogles  a  pretty  woman  until 
the  crimson  creeps  into  her  cheek,  then  prides  himself  on 
having  captured  her  heart  like  the  boy  caught  the  itch, — 
because  he  couldn't  help  it — when  she's  only  blushing  for 
the  mother  who  bore  the  pitiful  parody  on  manhood ;  who 
imagines  that  every  maid  who  deigns  to  waste  a  smile  an 
him  is  sighing  her  soul  out  for  his  sweet  sake,  has  allowed 
his  Gall  to  go  to>  his  head  and  curdle  his  brains. 


More  than  a  moiety  of  our  so-called  great  men  are  but 
featherless  geese,  possessing  a  superabundance  of  Gall — 
creatures  of  chance  who  ride  like  driftwood  on  the  crest  of 
a  wave  raised  by  forces  they  cannot  comprehend ;  but  they 
ride,  and  the  world  applauds  them  while  it  tramples  better 
men  beneath  its  brutal  feet.  Greatness  and  Gall,  genius 
and  goose-speech,  sound  and  sense  have  become  syno- 
nyms. If  you  fall  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  market  men 
will  quote  the  proverb  about  a  fool  and  his  money ;  if  on 
the  right  side  you're  a  Napoleon  of  finance.  Lead  a  suc- 
cessful revolt  and  you  are  a  pure  patriot  whose  memory 
should  be  preserved  to  latest  posterity;  head  an  unsuc- 
cessful uprising  and  you  are  a  miserable  rebel  who  should 
have  been  hanged.  "Nothing  succeeds  like  success."  Had 
the  Christian  religion  failed  to  take  root,  Judas  Iscariot 
would  have  been  commemorated  in  the  archives  of  Rome 
as  one  who  helped  stamp  out  the  hateful  heresy,  and  had 
Washington  got  the  worst  of  it  in  his  go  with  Cornwallis 
he  would  have  passed  into  history  as  a  second  Jack  Cade. 

Alexander  of  Macedon  was  great,  as  measured  by  the 
world's  standard  of  eminence.  After  two-and-twenty  cen- 
turies our  very  babes  prattle  of  this  bloody  butcher,  and 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  93 

even  his  horse  has  been  enshrined  in  history.  In  our  own 
day  Father!  Damien  left  kindred  and  country  and  went 
forth  to  die  for  the  miserable  lepers  in  the  mid-Pacific, 
but  he  is  already  forgotten — his  name  and  fame  have 
faded  from  the  minds  of  men.  Yet  greater  and  grander 
than  all  the  blood-stained  princes  and  potentates  of  earth; 
nobler,  more  god-like  than  all  the  proud  prelates  that  ever 
aired  their  turgid  eloquence  at  Christian  conference  or 
ecumenical  council  was  that  young  priest;  but  no  ceno- 
taph rises  to  commemorate  his  sacrifice — silent  as  his  own 
sealed  lips  is  the  trumpet  of  fame. 

But  for  Gall  of  the  Ai,  triple  X  brand,  commend  me  to 
the  little  pot-house  politician  who  poses  as  a  political 
prophet  and  points  out  to  wiser  men  their  public  duties. 
We  have  to-day  in  this  land  of  the  free  and  home  of  the 
crank,  thousands  of  self-important  little  personages  who 
know  as  little  of  political  economy  as  a  parrot  of  the 
power  of  prayer,  prating  learnedly  of  free-trade  or  pro- 
tection, greenbackism  or  metallic  money.  Men  who 
couldn't  tell  a  fundamental  principle  from  their  funny- 
bone,  an  economic  thesis  from  a  hot  tamale — who  don't 
know  whether  Ricardo  was  an  economist  or  a  corn-doc- 
tor— evolve  from  their  empty  ignorance  new  systems  of 
''saving  the  country,"  and  defend  them  with  the  dogmatic 
assurance  of  a  nigger  preacher  describing  the  devil — make 
gorgeous  displays  of  their  Gall.  I  have  noticed  that,  as  a 
rule,  the  less  a  man  knows  of  the  science  of  government  the 
crazier  he  is  to  go  to  congress.  About  half  the  young  states- 
men who  break  into  the  legislature  imagine  that  Roger  Q. 
Mills  wrote  the  Science  of  Economics,  and  that  Jefferson 
Davis  was  the  father  of  Democracy. 

But  the  Gall  is  not  confined  to  the  little  fellows — the  big 
political  M  D's  have  their  due  proportion.  The  remedies 
they  prescribe  for  Uncle  Sam's  ailments  remind  me  of  the 
panaceas  put  on  the  market  by  the  patent-medicine  men — 
warranted  to  cure  everything,  from  a  case  of  cholera-mor- 
bus  to  an  epidemic  of  poor  relations.  We  have  one  school  of 
practitioners  prescribing  free-trade  as  a  sure-cure  for  every 
industrial  ill,  another  a  more  drastic  system  of  protection. 
One  assures  us  that  the  silver-habit  is  dragging  us  down  to 
the  demnition  bow-wows,  another  that  only  an  heroic  dose 
of  white  dollars  will  save  us  from  industrial  death.  Politi- 
cal claptrap  to  corral  the  succulent  pie — "issues"  to  get  of- 
fice. We  have  had  high  and  low  tariff,  the  gold  and  silver 
standard,  greenbackism  and  "wild-cat"  currency;  we  have 
had  presidents  of  all  shades  of  political  faith  and  congresses 


94  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

of  every  kind  of  economic  folly;  yet  in  a  single  century 
America  has  risen  from  the  poorest  of  nations  to  the  wealth- 
iest in  all  the  world.  True  it  is  that  wealth  is  congested — 
that  willful  Waste  and  woeful  Want  go  hand  in  hand — that 
the  land  is  rilled  with  plutocrats  and  paupers ;  but  this  dis- 
tressing fact  is  due  to  the  faults  of  our  industrial  system  it- 
self, and  can  never  be  reformed  by  placing  fiddle-strings  on 
the  free  list  or  increasing  the  tariff  on  toothpicks. 

Gall?  Ye  gods!  Look  at  the  platform  promises  of  the 
blessed  Democratic  party — then  at  its  performances !  Look 
at  the  party  itself — a  veritable  omnium-gatherum  of  political 
odds  and  ends,  huddled  together  under  the  party  blanket  like 
household  gods  and  barn-yard  refuse  after  a  hurricane. 
High  and  low  tariffs  and  free-traders ;  gold-bugs,  green- 
backers  and  bi-metallists ;  Cleveland  and  Croker,  Altgekl 
and  Olney,  Hill  and  Hogg,  Waco's  Warwick  and  Colonel 
Culberson's  kid,  all  clamoring  to  be  dyed-in-the-wool  Dem- 
ocrats !  When  I  get  a  new  main-spring  put  in  my  vocabu- 
lary I'm  going  to  tackle  the  Gall  of  the  Populists  and  Re- 
publicans. 

*     *     * 

Some  specimens  of  Gall  amaze  me  by  their  greatness, 
some  amuse  me,  while  others  only  spoil  my  appetite.  Of 
the  latter  class  is  the  chronic  kicker  who  is  forever  fuming 
about  feminine  fashions.  If  the  hoop-skirt  comes  in  this 
critic  is  in  agony;  if  the  "pull-back"  makes  its  appearance 
he  has  a  fit  and  falls  in  it.  Ever  since  Eve  attired  herself 
in  a  few  freckles  and  fig-leaves  he's  been  reforming  the  fash- 
ions. Don't  mind  him,  ladies.  Like  a  peacock  crying  in 
the  night,  he's  disagreeable,  but  not  dangerous.  Adorn 
yourselves  as  you  see  fit ;  follow  such  fashions  as  seem  good 
in  your  sight,  and  have  no  fear  that  the  sons  of  men  will  ever 
forsake  you  because  of  your  clothes.  When  you  find  a 
man  dictating  to  the  ladies  what  they  shall  wear  you're  pret- 
ty apt  to  see  his  head  housed  in  a  stove-pipe  hat — the  most 
inartistic  and  awkward  monstrosity  ever  designed  by  the 
devil  to  make  the  Almighty  ashamed  of  his  masterpiece.  In 
all  history  there's  no  record  of  a  great  idea  being  born  in  a 
beegum.  I  never  saw  a  statue  of  a  hero  or  picture  of  a 
martyr  with  a  plug  hat  on.  Imagine  the  Lord  laying  aside 
a  silk  cady  preparatory  to  preaching  that  Sermon  on  the 
Mount — or  Napoleon  apostrophizing  the  pyramids  in  a 
plug!  Before  finding  fault  with  the  fashions  of  the  ladies 
just  imagine  Apollo  in  the  make-up  of  a  modern  society 
swell,  loafing  into  court  on  High  Olympus !  Why  Jove 
would  hit  him  with  a  thunderbolt  so  hard  there'd  be  nothing 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  95 

left  of  him  but  a  wilted  chrysanthemum  and  a  pair  o'  yaller 
shoes ! 

*     *     * 

For  a  specimen  of  Gall  that  must  amaze  the  very  gods 
commend  me  to  a  crowd  of  pharisaical  plutocrats,  piously 
offering,  in  a  hundred  thousand  dollar  church,  prayers  to 
him  who  had  nowhere  to  lay  his  head ;  who  pay  a  preacher 
$15,000  per  annum  to  point  the  way  to  Paradise,  while  in 
the  great  cities  of  every  Christian  country  children  must 
steal  or  starve  and  women  choose  between  death  and  dis- 
honor. New  York  is  crowded  with  costly  churches  that 
lift  their  proud  spires  into  the  empyrean,  that  part  the  clouds 
with  golden  fingers — monuments  which  Mammon  rears  as 
if  to  mock  the  lowly  Son  of  God.  Their  value  mounts  up 
into  the  millions ;  yet  I  learn — from  a  religious  paper,  mark 
you — that  100.000  men,  women  and  children  were  evicted 
in  New  York  alone  last  year  for  the  non-payment  of  rent; 
turned  into  the  streets  to  suffer  summer's  heat  or  winter's 
cold — to  beg,  or  starve,  or  steal,  as  they  saw  fit.  I  find 
these  startling  statistics  in  the  same  column  with  a  tearful 
appeal  for  more  money  to  send  missionaries  to  black  bar- 
barians— on  the  same  page  with  a  description  of  a  new 
church  that  must  have  cost  a  cold  half-million  of  cash. 
That's  what  I  call  sanctified  assurance — gall  masquerading 
as  grace.  And  what  is  true  of  New  York  is  true,  in  greater 
or  less  degree,  of  every  town  from  Plymouth  Rock  to  Poker 
Flats,  from  Tadmor-in-the-Wilderness  to  Yuba  Dam. 
Everywhere  the  widow  is  battling  with  want,  while  we  send 
Bibles  and  blankets,  prayer-books  and  pie,  salvation  and 
missionary  soup  to  a  job-lot  of  lazy  niggers  whose  souls 
aren't  worth  a  soumarkee  in  blocks-of-five — who  wouldn't 
walk  into  heaven  if  the  gates  were  wide  open,  but  once 
inside  would  steel  the  eternal  throne  if  it  wasn't  spiked  down. 
Let  the  heathen  rage;  we've  got  our  hands  full  at  home. 
I'd  rather  see  the  whole  black-and-tan  aggregation  short  on 
Bibles  than  one  white  child  crying  for  bread. 

While  Europe  and  America  are  peddling  saving  grace 
in  pagan  lands — and  incidentally  extending  the  market  for 
their  cheap  tobacco,  snide  jewelry  and  forty-rod  bug- juice — 
they  are  also  building  warships  and  casting  cannon — pre- 
paring to  cut  each  other's  throats  while  prating  of  the  prince 
of  peace !  The  idea  of  countries  that  have  to  build  forts  on 
their  frontiers  and  keep  colossal  standing  armies  to  avoid 
being  butchered  by  their  own  Christian  brethren;  that  are 
full  of  divorce  courts  and  demagogues,  penitentiaries  and 
poorhouses,  sending  young  theological  goslings,  who  be- 


96  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

lieve  that  all  of  divine  revelation  can  be  found  in  one  book, 
to  teach  the  philosophic  Hindu  the  road  to  heaven!  Gall! 
Why  the  men  we  are  trying  to  convert  were  preaching  the 
immortality  of  the  soul  when  the  Hebrew  prophets  were 
putting  people  to  the  sword  for  accepting  it;  they  were 
familiar  with  all  the  essential  features  of  the  Christian  faith 
a  thousand  years  before  the  crucifixion  of  Christ.  Charity 
begins  at  home.  In  our  own  country  children  are  coming 
up  in  ignorance  and  crime,  while  sect  vies  with  sect  in  the 
erection  of  proud  temples  in  which  polite  society  may  dis- 
play its  Parisian  finery  while  pretending  to  worship  One 
who  broke  bread  with  beggars  and  slept  in  the  brush. 

I  haven't  much  use  for  gold-plated  godliness.  Christ 
never  built  a  church,  or  asked  for  a  vacation  on  full  pay, — 
never.  He  indulged  in  no  political  harangues — never  told 
his  parishioners  how  to  vote — never  posed  as  a  professional 
Prohibitionist.  He  didn't  try  to  reform  the  fallen  women 
of  Jerusalem  by  turning  them  over  to  the  police,  a  la  Park- 
hurst.  Although  gladitorial  shows  were  common  in  his 
country — and  that  without  gloves — he  didn't  go  raging  up 
and  down  the  earth  like  some  of  our  Texas  dominies,  de- 
manding that  these  awful  crimes  against  civilization  should 
cease.  There  is  no  record  of  his  engineering  a  boycott 
against  business  men  who  dissented  from  his  doctrine.  I 
think  he  could  have  read  a  copy  of  the  Iconoclast  with  far 
more  patience  than  some  of  his  successors.  Human  or 
divine,  he  was  the  grandest  man  that  ever  graced  the  mighty 
tide  of  time.  His  was  a  labor  of  love,  instead  of  for  lucre. 
The  groves  were  his  temples,  the  mountain-side  his  pulpit, 
the  desert  his  sacristy  and  Jordan  his  baptismal  font. 

*     *     * 

Then  there's  the  unconscious  Gall  of  the  pious  parrot 
who  is  quite  sure  that  the  only  highway  to  the  heavenly 
hereafter  is  outlined  by  his- little  sect,  macadamized  by  his 
creed;  that  you've  got  to  travel  that  or  get  into  trouble, 
perhaps  fall  into  the  fire. 

Just  imagine  that  dear  Lord,  who  so  loved  sinners  that 
he  died  to  save  them  from  death  eternal,  looking  over 
heaven's  holy  battlements  and  observing  a  miserable  mortal 
plunging  downward  to  his  doom,  leaving  behind  him  a 
streak  of  fire  like  a  falling  star,  his  face  distorted  with  fear, 
his  every  hair  erect  and  singing  like  a  jewsharp.  He  asks 
St.  Peter: 

"Who's  that?" 

"Oh,"  says  the  man  on  the  door,  "that's  old  John  Smith." 

The  Lord  goes  over  to  the  office  of  the  Recording  Angel 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  97 

and  turns  the  leaves  of  the  great  ledger.  He  finds  the 
name,  "John  Smith,  No.  11027,"  and  on  the  credit  page 
these  entries:  "He  was  fearless  as  Caesar,  generous  as 
Macaenas,  tender  as  Guatama  and  true  to  his  friends  as  the 
stars  to  their  appointed  courses.  He  was  a  knight  of 
nature's  nobility,  a  lord  in  the  aristocracy  of  intellect,  cour- 
tier at  home  and  a  king  abroad.  On  the  debit  page  he 
reads :  "Went  fishing  on  Sunday.  There  was  a  miscue  on 
his  baptism.  He  knew  a  pretty  woman  from  an  ancient 
painting,  a  jack-pot  from  a  prayer-book,  and  when  smitten 
on  one  cheek  he  made  the  smacker  think  he'd  been  smuck 
by  a  cyclone."  Good-bye,  John ! 

*  It  may  be  that  the  monarch  of  the  majestic  universe 
marches  around  after  every  inconsequential  little  mortal, 
note-book  in  hand,  giving  him  a  white  mark  when  he  prays 
for  the  neighbor  who  poisons  his  dog,  or  tells  his  wife  the 
truth  regardless  of  consequences ;  a  black  one  when  he  bets 
his  money  on  the  wrong  horse  or  sits  down  on  the  sidewalk 
and  tries  to  swipe  the  front  gate  as  it  goes  sailing  by ;  but 
I  doubt  it.  If  I  could  make  the  sun,  moon  and  stars  in  one 
day  and  build  a  beautiful. woman  of  an  old  bone,  I'd  just 
like  to  see  the  color  of  that  man's  hair  I'd  waste  much  time 
and  attention  on. 

*     *     * 

Why  should  we  quarrel  about  our  faiths  and  declare  that 
this  is  right  and  that  is  wrong,  when  all  religions  are,  and 
must  of  necessity  ever  be,  fundamentally  one  and  the  same — 
the  worship  of  a  superior  power,  the  great 

"Father  of  all,  in  every  age,  in  ev'ry  clime  adored, 
By  saint,  by  savage  and  by  sage,  Jehovah,  Jove,  or  Lord." 


Man's  cool  assumption  that  the  Almighty  made  him  as 
his  "master-piece"  should  be  marked  Exhibit  A  in  the 
mighty  aggregation  of  Gall.  That  after  millions  of  years 
experience  in  the  creation  business — after  building  the  arch- 
angels and  the  devil ;  after  making  the  man  in  the  moon  and 
performing  other  wondrous  miracles,  the  straddling  six-foot 
biped  who  wears  a  spike-tail  coat  and  plug  hat,  a  silk  sur- 
cingle and  sooner  tie;  who  parts  his  name  on  the  side  and 
his  hair  in  the  middle ;  who  sucks  a  cane  and  simpers  like  a 
school-girl  struggling  with  her  first  compliment ;  who  takes 
it  for  granted  that  he  knows  it  all,  when  his  whole  life — 
including  his  birth,  marriage  and  death — is  a  piece  of  ridicu- 
lous guess-work ;  who  insists  that  he  has  a  soul  to  save,  yet 
labors  with  might  and  main  to  lose  it ;  protests  that  there's 


98  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

a  better  land  beyond  the  grave,  yet  moves  heaven  and 
earth  to  keep  from  going-  to  it  so  long  as  he  can  help  it — 
the  assumption,  I  say,  that  this  was  the  best  the  Creator 
could  do,  is  prima  facie  evidence  of  a  plentitude  of  Gall  of 
the  purest  ray  serene. 

The  calm  assurance  of  man  that  the  earth  and  all  it  con- 
tains were  made  for  his  especial  benefit;  that  woman  was 
created  solely  for  his  comfort;  that  the  sun  was  made  to 
give  him  light  by  day  and  the  moon  to  enable  him  to  find 
his  way  home  from  the  lodge  at  night  without  the  aid  of  a 
policeman ;  that  the  heavens  were  hung  with  a  resplendent 
curtain  of  stars  and  the  planet:;  sent  whirling  thro'  space  in 
a  majestic  dance  about  the  God  of  Day,  simply  to  afford 
him  matter  for  wonder  or  for  amusement  when  too  tired  to 
talk  politics  or  too  bilious  to  drink  beer,  evinces  an  egotism 
that  must  amuse  the  Almighty. 

Master-piece  indeed !  Why,  God  made  man,  and,  finding 
that  he  couldn't  take  care  of  himself,  made  woman  to  take 
care  of  him — and  she  proposes  to  discharge  her  heaven- 
ordained  duty  or  know  the  reason  why.  Tennyson  says 
that,  "as  the  husband  is  the  wife  is ;"  but  even  Tennyson 
didn't  know  it  quite  all.  When  wives  take  their  hubbies  for 
measures  of  morality,  marriage  will  become  an  enthusiastic 
failure  and  Satan  be  loosed  for  a  little  season.  We  acknowl- 
edge woman's  superiority  by  demanding  that  she  be  better 
than  we  could  if  we  would,  or  would  be  if  we  could. 

We  are  fond  of  alluding  to  woman  as  "the  weaker  ves- 
sel;" but  she  can  break  the  best  of  us  if  given  an  oppor- 
tunity. Pope  calls  man  the  "great  lord  of  all  things" — but 
Pope  never  got  married.  We  rule  with  a  rod  of  iron  the 
creatures  of  the  earth  and  air  and  sea ;  we  hurl  our  wither- 
ing defi  in  the  face  of  Kings  and  brave  presidential  light- 
ning; we  found  empires  and  straddle  the  perilous  political 
issue,  then  surrender  unconditionally  to  a  little  bundle  of 
dimples  and  deviltry,  sunshine  and  extravagance.  No  man 
ever  followed  freedom's  flag  for  patriotism  (and  a  pension) 
with  half  the  enthusiasm  that  he  will  trail  the  red,  white  and 
blue  that  constitute  the  banner  of  female  beauty.  The  mon- 
arch's fetters  cannot  curtail  our  haughty  freedom,  nor 
nature's  majestic  forces  confine  us  to  this  little  lump  of 
clay;  we  tread  the  ocean's  foam  beneath  our  feet,  harness 
the  thunderbolts  of  imperial  Jove  to  the  jaunting  car,  and 
even  aspire  to  mount  the  storm  and  walk  upon  the  wind; 
yet  the  bravest  of  us  tremble  like  cowards  and  lie  like  Cre- 
tans when  called  to  account  by  our  wives  for  some  of  our 
cussedness. 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  99 

But  you  will  say  that  I  have  wandered  from  my  text — • 
have  followed  the  ladies  off  and  got  lost.  Well,  it's  not  the 
first  time  it's  happened.  But  really,  I'm  not  so  inconsistent 
as  I  may  seem ;  for  if  the  gentler  sex  exceeds  us  in  goodness 
it  likewise  surpasses  us  in  Gall.  Perhaps  the  most  colossal 
exhibit  of  polite  and  elegant  audacity  this  world  can  boast 
is  furnished  by  that  female  who  has  made  a  marriage  of 
convenience;  has  wedded  money  instead  of  a  man, — prac- 
tically put  her  charms  up  at  auction  for  the  highest  bidder 
— yet  who  poses  as  a  paragon  of  purity;  gathers  up  her 
silken  skirts — the  price  of  her  legalized  shame — lest  they 
come  in  contact  with  the  calico  gown  of  some  poor  girl  who 
has  loved,  not  wisely,  but  too  well. 

Marriage  is  the  most  sacred  institution  ever  established 
on  earth,  making  the  father,  mother  and  child  a  veritable 
Holy  Trinity;  but  it  is  rapidly  degenerating  into  an  un- 
clean Humbug,  in  which  Greed  is  God  and  Gall  is  recog- 
nized high-priest.  We  now  consider  our  fortunes  rather 
than  our  affections,  acquire  a  husband  or  wife  much  as  we 
would  a  parrot  or  a  poodle,  and  get  rid  of  them  with  about 
as  little  compunction.  Cupid  now  feathers  his  arrows 
from  the  wings  of  the  gold  eagle  and  shoots  at  the  stomach 
instead  of  the  heart.  Love  without  law  makes  angels 
blush ;  but  law  without  love  crimsons  even  the  brazon  brow 
of  infamy. 

*     *     * 

But  the  fact  that  so  many  selfish,  soulless  marriages  are 
made  is  not  altogether  woman's  fault.  Our  ridiculous 
social  code  is  calculated  to  crush  all  sentiment  and  sweet- 
ness out  of  the  gentler  sex — to  make  woman  regard  herself 
as  merchandise  rather  than  as  a  moral  entity,  entitled  to 
life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness.  The  average 
woman  must  select  a  husband  from  a  narrow  circle;  must 
make  choice  among  two  or  three  admirers  or  elect  to  live 
a  loveless  old  maid — to  forego  the  joys  of  motherhood,  the 
happiness  of  a  home.  Man  is  privileged  to  go  forth  and 
seek  a  mate.  The  world  is  before  him,  a  veritable  "Dream 
of  Fair  Women."  He  wanders  at  will,  as  amid  a  mighty 
parterre  of  flowers,  sweet  as  the  breath  of  morn,  and  finally, 
before  some  fair  blossom  he  bows  the  knee — pours  forth 
the  incense  of  his  soul  to  the  one  woman  in  all  the  world 
he  would  make  his  wife.  True,  she  may  refuse  him  and 
marry  some  other  fellow ;  but  he  is  at  least  privileged  to 
approach  her,  to  plead  his  cause,  to  employ  all  the  art  and 
eloquence  of  love  to  bring  her  into  his  life.  Woman  en- 
joys no  such  privilege.  She  must  wait  to  be  wooed,  and  if 


100  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

her  king  comes  not  she  must  take  the  best  that  offers  and 
try  to  be  content. 

Every  daughter  of  Eve  dreams  of  an  ideal, — of  a  man 
tender  and  true,  who  will  fill  her  life  with  love's  own  melo- 
dy; his  word  her  law,  his  home  her  heaven,  his  honor  her 
glory  and  his  tomb  her  grave.  And  some  day,  from  these 
castles  in  the  clouds  he  comes — these  day-dreams,  golden 
as  the  dawn,  become  the  halo  of  a  mortal  man,  to  whom  her 
heart  turns  as  the  helianthus  to  the  sun.  At  last  the  god 
of  her  idolatry  doth  walk  the  earth;  but  she  must  stand 
afar, — must  not,  by  word  or  act,  betray  the  holy  passion 
that's  consuming  her,  lest  "that  monster  custom,  of  habits 
devil,"  doth  brand  her  bold  and  bad.  Love  ofttimes  begets 
love,  as  the  steel  strikes  fire  from  the  cold  flint,  and  a  word 
from  her  might  bring  him  to  her  feet ;  but  she  must  stand 
with  dumb  lips  and  assumed  indifference  and  see  him  drift 
out  of  her  life,  leaving  it  desolate  as  the  Scythian  desert, 
when  it  should  have  budded  and  blossomed  like  the  great 
blush  rose.  So  she  drifts  desolate  into  old  maidenhood  and 
the  company  of  Maltese  cats ;  else,  when  hope  is  dead  in 
her  heart — when  the  dream  of  her  youth  has  become  dust 
and  ashes — she  marries  for  money  and  tries  to  feed  her 
famished  heart  with  Parisian  finery,  to  satisfy  her  soul  with 
the  Dead  Sea  fruit  of  fashion. 

No ;  I  wouldn't  give  woman  the  ballot — not  in  a  thousand 
years.  I  want  no  petticoats  in  politics — no  she-senators  or 
female  presidents ;  but  I'd  do  better  by  woman ;  I'd  repeal 
that  ridiculous  social  law — survival  of  female  slavery — 
which  compels  her  to  wait  to  be  wooed.  I'd  put  a  hundred 
leap-years  in  every  century,  give  woman  the  right  to  do  half 
the  courting — to  find  a  man  to  her  liking  and  capture  him 
if  she  could.  Talk  about  reforms!  Why,  the  bachelors 
would  simply  have  to  become  Benedicts  or  take  to  the  brush, 
and  there'd  be  no  old  maids  outside  the  dime  museums. 
But  I  was  speaking  of  Gall. 


Gall  is  usually  unadulterated  impudence ;  but  sometimes  it 
is  irremediably  idiocy.  When  you  find  a  man  pluming 
himself  on  his  ancestors  you  can  safely  set  it  down  that 
he's  got  the  disease  in  its  latter  form,  and  got  it  bad.  I 
always  feel  sorry  for  a  man  who's  got  nothing  to  be  proud 
of  but  a  dead  gran'daddy,  for  it  appears  to  be  a  law  of 
nature  that  there  shall  be  but  one  great  man  to  a  tribe — that 
the  lightning  of  genius  shall  not  twice  strike  the  same  family 
tree.  I  suppose  that  Cleveland  and  Jim  Corbett,  Luther 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  101 

and  Mrs.  Lease,  Homer  and  J.  S.  Hogg  had  parents  and 
gran 'parents ;  but  we  don't  hear  much  about  'em.  And 
while  the  ancestors  of  the  truly  great  are  usually  lost  in  the 
obscurity  of  the  cornfield  or  cotton-patch,  their  children 
seldom  succeed  in  setting  the  world  on  fire.  Talent  may 
be  transmitted  from  father  to  son ;  but  you  can  no  more  in- 
herit genius  than  you  can  inherit  a  fall  out  of  a  balloon. 
It  is  the  direct  gift  of  that  God  who  is  no  respecter  of  per- 
sons, and  who  sheds  his  glory  on  the  cotter's  child  as  freely 
as  on  those  of  monarchs  and  of  millionaires. 

We  have  in  this  country  three  aristocracies:  The  aris- 
tocracy of  intellect,  founded  by  the  Almighty;  the  aristoc- 
racy of  money,  founded  by  Mammon,  and  the  aristocracy 
of  family,  founded  by  fools.  The  aristocracy  of  brains 
differs  from  those  of  birth  and  boodle  as  a  star  differs  from 
a  jack-o'-lantern,  as  the  music  of  the  spheres  from  the  bray 
of  a  burro,  as  a  woman's  first  love  from  the  stale  affection 
hashed  up  for  a  fourth  husband. 

To  the  aristocracy  of  money  belong  many  worthy  men; 
but  why  should  the  spirit  of  mortal  be  proud  ?  The  founder 
of  one  of  the  wealthiest  and  most  exclusive  of  American 
families  skinned  beeves  and  made  weinerwurst.  The  calling 
was  an  honest  and  useful  one.  His  sausages  were  said  to 
be  excellent,  and  at  a  skin  game  he  was  exceptionally  hard 
to  beat :  but  his  descendants  positively  decline  to  put  a  calf's 
head  regardant  and  a  cleaver  rampant  on  their  coat-of-arms. 
A  relative  much  addicted  to  the  genealogical  habit  once 
assured  me  that  he  could  trace  our  family  back  600  years 
just  as  easy  as  following  the  path  to  the  drugstore  in  a 
Prohibition  town.  I  was  delighted  to  hear  it,  to  learn  that 
I  too  had  ancestors — that  some  of  them  were  actually  on  the 
earth  before  I  was  born.  While  he  was  tracing  I  was 
figuring.  I  found  that  in  600  years  there  should  be  20  gen- 
erations— if  everybody  did  his  duty — and  that  in  20  genera- 
tions a  man  has  2,093,056  ancestors!  Just  think  of  it! 
Why,  if  he  had  gone  back  600  years  further  he  might  have 
discovered  that  I  was  a  lineal  descendant  of  Adam,  perhaps 
distantly  related  to  crowned  monarchs — if  not  to  the  Duke 
cf  Marlborough.  As  my  cousin  couldn't  account  for  this 
job-lot  of  kinsmen — had  no  idea  how  many  had  been  hanged, 
gone  into  politics  or  written  poetry,  I  rang  him  off.  Those 
people  who  delight  to  trace  their  lineage  through  several 
generations  to  some  distinguished  man  should  be  tapped  for 
the  simples.  When  John  Smith  starts  out  to  found  a  family 
and  marries  Miss  Jones,  their  son  is  half  Smith  and  half 
Jones*.  The  next  crop  is  nearly  one-fourth  Smith  and  at  the 


102  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

end  of  a  dozen  generations  the  young  Smiths  bear  about  as 
much  relation  to  the  original  as  they  do  to  a  rabbit. 


There  are  various  grades  of  Gall;  but  perhaps  the  super- 
lative brand  is  that  which  leads  a  man  to  look  down  with 
lofty  scorn  upon  those  of  his  fellow  mortals  who  have 
tripped  on  Life's  rugged  pathway  and  plunged  into  a  shore- 
less sea  of  shame.  I  am  no  apologist  for  crime — I  would 
not  cover  its  naked  hideousness  with  the  Arachne-robe  of 
sentiment;  but  I  dp  believe  that  many  a  social  out-cast, 
many  a  branded  criminal,  will  get  as  sweet  a  harp  in  the 
great  hereafter  as  those  who  have  kept  themselves  un- 
spotted from  the  world.  It  is  easy  enough  to  say  grace 
over  a  good  square  meal,  to  be  honest  on  a  fat  income,  to 
praise  God  when  full  of  pie;  but  just  wait  till  you  get  the 
same  razzle-dazzle  the  devil  dished  up  for  Job  and  see  how 
your  halle-hallelujahs  hold  out  before  exalting  your  horn. 
Victory  does  not  always  proclaim  the  hero  nor  virtue  the 
saint.  It  were  easy  enough  to  sail  with  wind  and  tide — to 
float  over  fair  seas,  mid  purple  isles  of  spice;  but  the  cap- 
tain who  loses  his  ship  mid  tempests  dire,  mid  wreck  and 
wrath,  may  be  a  better  sailor  and  a  braver  than  the  master 
who  rides  safe  to  port  with  rigging  all  intact  and  every 
ensign  flying.  With 

"The  boast  of  heraldry,  the  j   -mp  of  power, 
And  all  that  beauty,  all  that  wealth  e'er  gave," 

it  were  easy  enough  to  be  a  good  citizen  and  a  consistent 
Christian.  It  is  poverty  and  contempt,  suffering  and  dis- 
appointment that  try  men's  souls — that  proclaim  of  what 
metal  they  are  made.  Faith,  Hope  and  Charity  are  man's 
triune  transcendent — "and  the  greatest  of  these  is  Charity." 
A  pharisee  is  either  a  pious  fraud  or  a  hopeless  fool — he's 
either  short  on  "gumption"  or  long  on  Gall. 


Half  the  alleged  honesty  of  this  world  is  but  Gall,  and 
must  be  particularly  offensive  to  the  Almighty.  We  have 
oodles  of  men  in  every  community  who  are  legally  honest, 
but  morally  rotten.  Legal  honesty  is  the  brand  usually 
proclaimed  as  "the  best  policy."  Only  fools  risk  the  pen- 
itentiary to  fill  their  purse.  The  smart  rogue  is  ever  "honest 
within  the  law" — infamous  in  strict  accord  with  the  criminal 
code. 

Dives  may  attire  himself  in  purple  and  fine  linen  and 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  103 

fare  sumptuously  every  day,  while  Lazarus  lies  at  his  door 
for  the  dogs  to  lick,  vainly  craving  the  crumbs  that  fall  from 
the  millionaire's  table,  and  still  be  legally  honest,  even  a 
church  member  in  good  standing ;  but  his  loyalty  to  legal 
forms  will  avail  him  but  little  when  he  finds  his  coat-tails 
afire  and  no  water  \\ithin  forty  miles. 

The  girl  who  flirts  with  a  featherless  young  gosling  till 
he  doesn't  know  whether  he's  floating  in  a  sea  of  cham- 
pagne to  the  sound  of  celestial  music,  sliding  down  a  greased 
rainbow  or  riding  on  the  ridge-pole  of  the  aurora  borealis, 
then  tells  him  that  she  can  only  be  a  kind  of  Christmas- 
present,  opera-ticket  sister  to  him;  who  steals  his  unripe 
affections  and  allows  'em  to  get  frost-bitten — carries  him 
into  the  empyrean  of  puppy-love,  only  to  drop  him  with  a 
dull  plunk  that  fills  his  callow  heart  with  compound  frac- 
tures— well,  she  cannot  be  prosecuted  for  petit  larceny  nor 
indicted  for  malicious  mischief;  but  the  unfortunate  fellow 
who  finally  gets  her  will  be  glad  to  go  to  heaven,  where 
there's  neither  marrying  nor  giving  in  marriage. 

The  man  who  preaches  Prohibition  in  public  and  pays 
court  to  a  gallon  jug  of  corn-juice  in  private;  who  damns 
the  saloon  at  home  and  sits  up  with  it  all  night  abroad,  may 
not  transcend  the  law  of  the  land,  but  if  his  Gall  should 
burst  the  very  buzzards  would  break  their  necks  trying  to 
get  out  of  the  country. 

The  druggist  who  charges  a  poor  dunderhead  a  dollar  for 
filling  a  prescription  that  calls  in  Latin  for  a  spoonful  of  salt 
and  an  ounce  of  water,  may  do  no  violence  to  the  criminal 
code,  but  he  plays  ducks  and  drakes  with  the  moral  law. 

The  little  tin-horn  attorney,  whose  specialties  are  divorce 
cases  and  libel  suits ;  who  stirs  up  good-for-naughts  to  sue 
publishers  for  $10,000  damages  to  lo-cent  reputations; 
who's  as  ready  to  shield  Vice  from  the  sword  of  Justice  as 
to  defend  Virtue  from  stupid  violence;  who's  ever  for  sale 
to  the  highest  bidder  and  keeps  eloquence  on  tap  for  who- 
soever cares  to  buy ;  who  would  rob  the  orphan  of  his  patri- 
mony on  a  technicality  or  brand  the  Virgin  Mary  as  a  bawd 
to  shield  a  black-mailer — well,  he  cannot  be  put  into  the 
penitentiary,  more's  the  pity!  but  it's  some  satisfaction  to 
believe  that,  if  in  all  the  great  universe  of  God  there  is  a 
hell  where  fiends  lie  howling,  the  most  sulphurous  section 
is  reserved  for  the  infamous  shyster — that  if  he  cannot  be 
debarred  from  the  courts  of  earth  he'll  get  the  bounce  from 
those  of  heaven. 

The  woman  who  inveigles  some  poor  fool — perhaps  old 
enough  to  be  her  father — into  calling  her  his  tootsie-wootsie 


104  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

over  his  own  signature,  then  brings  suit  for  breach  of  prom- 
ise— or  the  Seventh  Commandment;  who  exhibits  her 
broken  heart  to  the  judge  and  jury  and  demands  that  it  be 
patched  up  with  Uncle  Sam's  illuminated  anguish  plasters ; 
who  plays  the  adventuress,  then  poses  in  the  public  prints  as 
an  injured  innocent — sends  a  good  reputation  to  join  a  bad 
character  in  hope  of  monetary  reward — well,  she  too  may 
be  legally  honest;  but  it's  just  as  well  to  watch  her,  for  no 
woman  worth  powder  to  blow  her  to  perdition  ever  did  or 
ever  will  carry  such  a  case  into  court.  When  a  woman's 
heart  is  really  hurting  her  money  is  not  going  to  help  it; 
when  she's  truly  sorry  for  her  sin  she  tells  her  troubles  to 
the  Lord  instead  of  to  policemen  and  reporters. 

The  man  who  sues  a  fellow-citizen  for  alienating  his 
wife's  affections,  instead  of  striking  his  trail  with  a  bell- 
mouthed  blunderbuss  and  a  muzzle-loading  bulldog;  who 
asks  the  court  to  put  a  silver  lining  in  the  cloud  of  infamy 
that  hangs  over  his  home ;  who  tries  to  make  capital  of  his 
shame  and  heal  with  golden  guineas  the  hurt  that  honor 
feels — well,  he  too  may  be  a  law-abiding  citizen ;  but  ten 
thousand  such  souls,  if  separated  from  their  Gall,  might 
play  hide-and-seek  on  the  surface  of  a  copper  cent  for  a 
hundred  years  and  never  find  each  other. 


Dignity  is  but  a  peculiar  manifestation  of  Gall.  It  is  the 
stock  in  trade  of  fools.  If  Almighty  God  ever  put  up  great 
dignity  and  superior  intellect  in  the  same  package  it  must 
have  got  misplaced.  They  are  opposing  elements,  as  an- 
tagonistic as  the  doctrines  of  infinite  love  and  infant  damna- 
tion. Knowledge  makes  men  humble;  true  genius  is  ever 
modest.  The  donkey  is  popularly  supposed  to  be  the  most 
stupid  animal  extant — excepting  the  dude.  He's  dso  the 
most  dignified — since  the  extinction  of  the  dodo.  No  pope 
or  president,  rich  in  the  world's  respect;  no  prince  or  oo- 
tentate  reveling  in  the  pride  of  sovereign  power ;  no  poet  or 
philosopher  bearing  his  blushing  honors  thick  upon  him  ever 
equaled  a  blind  donkey  in  impressive  dignity.  As  a  man's 
vision  broadens ;  as^  he  begins  to  realize  what  a  miserable 
little  microbe  he  is  in  that  mighty  immensity,  studded  with 
the  stupendous  handiwork  of  a  power  that  transcends  his 
comprehension,  his  dignity  drains  off  and  he  feels  like  ask- 
ing to  be  recognized  just  long  enough  to  apologize  for  his 
existence. 

When  I  see  a  little  man  strut  forth  in  the  face  of  heaven 
like  a  turkey-cock  on  dress  parade ;  forgotten  aeons  behind 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  105 

him,  blank  time  before  him,  his  birth  a  mystery,  his  death 
a  leap  in  the  dark;  when  I  see  him  pose  on  the  grave  of 
forgotten  races  and  puff  himself  up  with  pomposity  like  the 
frog  in  the  fable;  when  I  see  him  sprinkled  with  the  dust 
of  fallen  dynasties  and  erecting  new  altars  upon  the  site  of 
forgotten  fanes,  yet  staggering  about  under  a  load  of  dignity 
that  would  spring  the  knee-joints  of  an  arch-angel,  I  don't 
wonder  that  the  Lord  once  decided  to  drown  the  whole  lay- 
out like  a  litter  of  blind  puppies. 


A  lecture  on  Gall  were  woefully  incomplete  without  some 
reference  to  the  press,  that  "archimedean  lever"  and  ''mould- 
er of  public  opinion."  The  average  newspaper  posing  as  a 
"public  educator"  is  a  specimen  of  Gall  that  cannot  be  prop- 
erly analyzed  in  one  evening.  Men  do  not  establish  news- 
papers for  the  express  purpose  of  reforming  the  world,  but 
rather  to  print  what  a  large  number  of  people  in  a  particular 
community  want  to  read  and  are  willing  to  pay  for.  A 
newspaper  is  simply  a  mirror  in  which  the  community  sees 
itself,  not  as  it  should  be,  but  as  it  actually  is.  It  is  not  the 
mother,  but  the  daughter  of  public  opinion.  The  printing 
press  is  a  mighty  phonograph  that  echoes  back  the  joy  and 
the  sorrow,  the  glory  and  the  shame  of  the  generation  it 
serves.  I  have  no  more  quarrel  with  editors  for  filling  their 
columns  with  inanities  than  casting  shadows  when  they 
stand  in  the  sun.  They  know  what  kind  of  mental  pabulum 
their  people  crave,  and  they  are  no  more  in  business  for  their 
health  than  is  the  merchant.  They  know  that  should  they 
print  the  grandest  sermon  that  ever  fell  from  Massillon's 
lips  of  gold  not  20  per  cent.,  even  of  the  professedly  pious, 
would  read  it;  but  that  a  detailed  account  of  a  fragrant  di- 
vorce case  or  international  prize-fight  will  cause  99  per  cent, 
of  the  very  elect  of  the  Lord  to  swoop  down  upon  it  like 
a  hungry  hen-hawk  on  an  unripe  gosling  and  fairly  devour 
it,  then  roll  their  eyes  to  heaven  like  a  calf  with  the  colic 
and  wonder  what  this  wicked  old  world  is  coming  to.  The 
editor  knows  that  half  the  people  who  pretend  to  be  filled 
to  overflowing  with  the  grace  of  God  are  only  perambulating 
pillars  of  pure  Gall.  He  knows  that  the  very  people  who 
criticise  him  for  printing  accounts  of  crimes  and  making 
spreads  on  sporting  events,  would  transfer  their  patronage 
to  other  papers  if  he  heeded  their  howling — that  they  are 
talking  for  effect  thro'  the  crown  of  their  felts. 

Speaking  of  prize-fights  reminds  me  that  a  governor  who, 
after  winking  at  a  hundred  brutal  slugging  matches,  puts  his 


106  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

state  to  the  expense,  of  a  legislative  session  to  prevent  a  pair 
of  gladiators  pounding  each  other  with  soft  gloves,  is  not 
suffering  for  lack  of  Gall ;  that  those  pious  souls  who  never 
suspected  that  pugilism  was  an  insult  to  our  civilization  un- 
til they  got  a  good  opportunity  to  make  a  grand-stand  play, 
then  whereased  and  resoluted  themselves  black  in  the  face 
anent  its  brutality,  should  be  presented  with  a  medal  of  pure 
brass.  Politics  is  said  to  make  strange  bed-fellows,  but  I 
scarce  expected  to  see  a  shoe-string  gambler  and  would-be 
Don  Juan  lauded  by  ministerial  associations  as  "our  heroic 
young  Christian  governor." 

Gall?  Why,  Geo.  Clark  presumes  to  give  Bismarck 
pointers  and  congress  advice.  Nobody  knows  so  well  how 
to  manage  a  husband  as  an  old  maid.  A  bachelor  can  give 
the  father  of  a  village  pointers  on  the  training  of  boys.  Our 
Northern  neighbors  know  exactly  how  to  deal  with  the 
nigger.  The  man  who  would  starve  but  for  the  industry  of 
his  wife  feels  competent  to  manage  the  finances  of  the  coun- 
try. People  who  couldn't  be  trusted  to  wean  a  calf,  tell 
us  all  about  the  Creator  of  the  Cosmos.  Sam  Jones  wants 
to  debate  with  Bob  Ingersoll,  and  every  forks-of-the-creek 
economist  takes  a  hard  fall  out  of  Henry  George.  The 
A.  P.  A.  agitators  prate  loudly  of  freedom  of  conscience  and 
insist  on  disfranchising  the  Catholics.  We  boast  of  reli- 
gious liberty,  then  enact  iron-clad  Sunday  laws  that  compel 
Jew  and  pagan  to  conform  to  our  creed  or  go  to  prison. 
The  prohibs  want  to  confine  the  whole  world  to  cold  water 
because  their  leaders  haven't  sufficient  stamina  to  stay  sober. 
Men  who  fail  to  make  a  living  at  honest  labor  insist  on 
entering  the  public  service.  Political  parties  charge  up  to 
each  other  the  adverse  decrees  of  Providence.  Atheists 
deny  the  existence  of  God  because  he  doesn't  move  in  their 
set,  while  ministers  assume  that  a  criticism  of  themselves  is 
an  insult  to  the  Creator. 


But  to  detain  you  longer  were  to  give  a  practical  illustra- 
tion of  my  text.  I  will  be  told  that  Gall  is  a  necessary  evil ; 
that  a  certain  amount  of  audacity,  of  native  impudence,  is 
necessary  to  success.  I  deny  it.  Fame  and  wealth  and 
power  constitute  our  ideal  of  success — folly  born  of  false- 
hood. Only  the  useful  are  successful.  Father  Damien  was 
the  grandest  success  of  the  century ;  Alexander  of  Macedon 
the  most  miserable  failure  known  to  human  history — with 
the  possible  exception  of  Grover  Cleveland.  Alexander 
employed  his  genius  to  conquer  the  Orient  and  Cleveland 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  107 

his  stupidity  to  ruin  the  Occident.  The  kingdom  of  the 
one  went  to  pieces,  and  the  party  of  the  other  is  now 
posing  as  the  lost  tribe  of  the  political  Israel ! 

Success?  A  Gould  must  give  up  his  gold  at  the  grave, 
the  sovereign  surrender  his  sceptre,  the  very  gods  are  in 
time  forgotten — are  swallowed  up  in  the  voiceless,  viewless 
past,  hidden  by  the  shadows  of  the  centuries.  Why  should 
men  strive  for  fame,  that  feather  in  the  cap  of  fools,  when 
nations  and  peoples  perish  like  the  flowers  and  are  forgotten 
— when  even  continents  fade  from  the  great  world's  face 
and  the  ocean's  bed  becomes  the  mountain's  brow.  Why 
strive  for  power,  that  passes  like  the  perfume  of  the  dawn, 
and  leaves  prince  and  pauper  peers  in  death?  Why  should 
man,  made  in  the  mortal  image  of  immortal  God,  become 
the  subservient  slave  of  Greed  and  barter  all  of  time  for 
a  handful  of  yellow  dross  to  cast  upon  the  threshold  of  eter- 
nity? "Poor  and  content  is  rich,"  and  rich  enough.  With 
a  roof  to  shelter  those  his  heart  holds  dear,  and  table  fur- 
nished forth  with  frugal  fare;  with  manhood's  dauntless 
courage  and  woman's  deathless  love,  the  peasant  in  his  lowly 
cot  may  be  richer  far  than  the  prince  in  his  imperial  hall. 

Success  ?  I  would  rather  be  a  fox  and  steal  fat  geese  than 
a  miserly  millionaire  and  prey  upon  the  misfortunes  of  my 
fellows.  I  would  rather  be  a  doodle-bug  burrowing  in  the 
dust  than  a  plotting  politician,  trying  to  inflate  a  second- 
term  gubernatorial  boom  with  the  fetid  breath  of  a  foul  hy- 
pocrisy. I  would  rather  be  a  peddler  of  hot  peanuts  than 
a  President  who  gives  to  bond-grabbers  and  boodlers  privi- 
lege to  despoil  the  pantries  of  the  poor.  I  would  rather  be 
a  louse  on  the  head  of  a  lazar  than  lord  high  executioner  of 
a  theological  college  that,  to  preserve  its  reputation  and  fill 
its  coffers  with  filthy  lucre,  brands  an  orphan  babe  as  a 
bawd.  I  would  rather  watch  the  stars  shining,  down  thro' 
blue  immensity,  and  the  cool  mists  creeping  round  the  pur- 
ple hills,  than  feast  my  eyes  on  all  the  tawdry  treasures  of 
Ophir  and  of  Ind.  I  would  rather  play  a  corn-stalk  fiddle 
while  pickaninnies  dance,  than  build,  of  widows'  sighs  and 
orphans'  tears,  a  flimsy  bubble  of  fame  to  be  blown  adown 
the  narrow  beach  of  Time  into  Eternity's  shoreless  sea.  I 
would  rather  be  the  beggar  lord  of  a  lodge  in  the  wilderness, 
dress  in  a  suit  of  sunburn  and  live  on  hominy  and  hope,  yet 
see  the  love-light  blaze  unbought  in  truthful  eyes,  than  to 
be  the  marauding  emperor  of  the  mighty  world,  and  know 
not  who  fawned  upon  the  master  and  who  esteemed  the 
man. 


108  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 


INCOME  TAX  DECISION. 

The  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  has  taken  a 
whirl  at  the  income  tax  law  and  left  it  looking  like  a  picnic 
suit  after  a  shower.  The  bigwigs  agreed  to  disagree  on 
pretty  nearly  every  point  in  controversy,  deciding  only  two, 
and  these  in  utter  disregard  of  the  laws  of  logic  and  the  dic- 
tates of  common  sense.  Chief  Justice  Fuller  gravely  declares 
that  incomes  derived  from  state,  county  and  municipal  bonds, 
(amounting  to  $65,000,000  per  annum)  "are  not  proper  sub- 
jects for  the  taxing  powers  of  Congress.''  If  not,  why  not? 
The  federal  government  is  supported  by  revenues  drawn 
from  the  people  who  constitute  the  various  local  govern- 
ments, and  upon  whom  congress  is  empowered  by  the  con- 
stitution to  levy  a  direct  tax.  Any  property  is  depreciated 
in  value  by  the  amount  of  the  tax  laid  upon  it.  Then  where- 
in is  it  more  objectionable  for  Congress  to  depreciate  the 
value  of  Texas  bonds  than  the  value  of  the  property  pledged 
for  their  redemption?  The  difference  would  seem  to  con- 
sist in  the  fact  that  state,  county  and  municipal  securities 
yielding  a  revenue  of  $65,000,000  per  annum  have  passed 
into  the  hands  of  the  monied  aristocracy  who  must  be  pro- 
tected, while  the  property  from  which  so  much  interest  is 
yearly  wrung  is  largely  in  the  possession  of  the  masses — 
who  are  "proper  subjects  for  the  taxing  power  of  Con- 
gress." If  I  own  a  little  home  in  Waco  I  am  taxed  to  pay 
interest  on  bonds  issued  by  state,  county  and  municipality, 
and  may  be  mulcted  for  the  support  of  the  federal  govern- 
ment ;  but  the  millionaire  into  whose  plethoric  purse  the  in- 
terest goes  must  not  be  troubled  by  Uncle  Sam's  tax  collect- 
ors. So  says  the  court.  The  income  of  A,  derived  from  culti- 
vating cotton  or  planting  hogs,  is  a  "proper  subject  for  the 
taxing  power  of  Congress,"  while  the  income  of  B,  derived 
from  state,  county  or  municipal  six  per-cents,  is  not !  Had 
the  law  been  upheld,  buyers  of  future  bond  issues  would 
unquestionably  shift  the  tax  upon  the  people  emitting  them ; 
but  to  urge  their  exemption  on  that  account  were  a  plea  for 
the  exemption  of  merchants  and  manufacturers,  telegraph 
companies  and  common  carriers.  Had  the  law  been  upheld 
the  tax  upon  that  $65,000,000  per  annum  now  derived  from 
state,  county  and  municipal  bonds,  and  amounting  to  more 
than  $1,300,000,  would  have  been  borne  exclusively  by  the 
holders — would  have  constituted  a  true  income  tax  as  in- 
tended by  Congress,  because  it  could  not  have  been  shifted 
to  other  shoulders.  The  best  clause  in  the  entire  law — 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  109 

granting  the  wisdom  of  an  income  tax — has  been  knocked 
out,  not  because  it  was  unconstitutional,  (for  the  Chief  Jus- 
tice did  not  so  declare  it),  but  because  it  displeased  the 
court,  which  appears  to  have  made  the  plutocrat  its  especial 
protege.  The  second  point  decided  by  the  court  was  that 
a  tax  on  incomes  derived  from  land  were  equivalent  to  a 
direct  tax  upon  the  land  itself,  therefore,  inadmissible  unless 
apportioned  as  provided  by  the  Constitution.  If  this  be 
sound  logic,  then  the  Supreme  Court  has  stricken  out  the 
enacting  clause  of  the  law  in  question;  it  is  dead  from  nozzle 
to  narrative,  and  we  might  just  as  well  call  off  the  col- 
lectors. With  this  utterance  of  Chief  Justice  Fuller  for 
premise,  the  conclusion  must  inevitably  follow  that  a  tax  on 
income  derived  from  any  class  of  property  whatsoever  is 
equivalent  to  a  direct  tax,  therefore,  unless  apportioned,  un- 
constitutional and  void.  It  were  clearly  absurd  to  say  that 
a  tax  on  income  derived  from  land  is  "direct,"  while  that  on 
incomes  derived  from  buildings,  mines,  cattle,  newspapers, 
professions,  etc.,  is  "indirect."  That  kind  of  hair-splitting 
would  disgrace  a  forks-of-the-creek  economist  or  profes- 
sional shyster.  If  a  tax  on  rent  is  a  direct  tax,  what  the 
devil  is  a  tax  on  salary — the  reward  of  individual  effort? 
"What,"  asks  Chief  Justice  Fuller,  "is  the  land  but  the 
profit  on  it?"  And  what,  we  ask,  is  any  class  of  property, 
profession  or  occupation  but  "the  profit  on  it  ?"  The  idea  of 
the  framers  of  the  income  tax  law  was  to  compel  every  man 
to  contribute  to  the  support  of  government  according  to  his 
abilities  rather  than  his  necessities;  but  the  Supreme  Court 
has  practically  declared  that  "Unto  every  one  that  hath  shall 
be  given,  and  he  shall  have  abundance;  but  from  him  that 
hath  not  shall  be  taken  away  even  that  which  he  hath." 


SANCTIFICATION  AND  THE  SWORD.' 

ANOTHER  "TEA  PARTY"  PENDING. 

One  of  the  leaders  of  the  crusade  for  disestablishment  in 
Wales  writes  the  Iconoclast  from  Manchester,  England,  as 
follows : 

"I  hope  to  live  to  see  the  complete  separation  of  church  and  state 
throughout  the  civilized  world.  I  am  a  churchman,  but  the  church 
and  state  should  be  kept  as  far  apart  as  possible.  America  is  my 
ideal.  There  the  government  of  man  and  the  government  of  God 
are  separate  and  distinct,  the  one  compulsory,  the  other  entirely  a 
matter  of  conscience." 


110  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

I  much  fear  that  my  English  friend  is  not  a  close  student 
of  American  institutions  or  he  would  look  elsewhere  for  his 
"ideal."  He  has  yet  to  learn  that  even  here — in  this  boast- 
ed land  of  liberty — "the  government  of  man  and  the  gov- 
ernment of  God"  are  still  starring  as  Siamese  twins  and  that 
the  latter  is  no  less  compulsory  than  its  companion.  He 
has  evidently  not  heard  that  the  American  citizen,  whether 
he  be  Jew  or  Gentile,  Christian  or  Atheist,  is  compelled  to 
cough  up  an  extra  sum  to  the  tax  collector  in  order  that 
hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars  worth  of  church  property 
may  escape  the  government  mulct  and  legislative  bodies  be 
provided  with  matin  prayers — paid  for  at  the  rate  of  $5  a 
minute  from  the  public  purse.  He  has  probably  never  seen 
a  great  American  state  selling  a  widow's  home  or  auc- 
tioning off  her  cow  to  satisfy  a  tax  assessment,  while  the 
bells  of  a  costly  church  in  the  same  block  pealed  merrily^as 
tho'  praising  God  that  it  had  a  "pull"  on  the  government. 
Nor  has  he  carefully  examined  the  Sunday  laws  here  in 
force  or  he  would  not  assert  that  with  us  "the  government 
of  God  is  entirely  a  matter  of  conscience."  Uncle  Sam  has 
evidently  deceived  our  correspondent — and  has  well  nigh 
humbugged  himself — with  his  foolish  boasts  of  "religious 
liberty,"  "freedom  of  conscience,"  etc.  Our  states  are  prac- 
tically theocracies,  our  legislatures  ecumenical  councils  by 
which  those  religious  dogmas  entertained  by  the  majority 
are  declared  the  law  of  the  land  and  enforced  by  judicial 
process,  the  posse  comitatus  and  the  entire  military  force  at 
the  command  of  the  government.  We  might  at  least  expect 
that  beneath  the  Lone  Star,  that  especial  child  of  liberty,  the 
state  would  eschew  the  sacerdotal  character  and  confine  it- 
self strictly  to  secular  matters ;  yet  our  legislatures  are  fully 
persuaded  that  they  are  in  duty  bound  to  guard  both  the 
spiritual  and  temporal  welfare  of  the  citizen — that  they 
have  been  duly  ordained  to  administer  the  government  of 
both  man  and  God.  Texas  plumes  herself  on  being  "the 
banner  democratic  state,"  has  much  to  say  anent  personal 
liberty  and  local  self-government  and  never  tires  of  pointing 
the  finger  of  scorn  at  sumptuary  laws ;  yet  her  statutes  make 
it  a  misdemeanor  punishable  by  fine — which  the  offender 
must  lay  out  in  prison  if  he  cannot  pay — to  labor,  sell 
goods,  or  open  a  place  of  amusement  in  any  section  of  the 
state,  regardless  of  the  religious  predilections  of  the  people. 
Here  we  have  a  conservation  of  the  spirit  of  the  Spanish 
Inquisition  showing  itself  as  boldly  as  it  dares,  the  fag-end 
of  that  early  New  England  fanaticism  and  tongue-boring 
cropping  out  where  a  big  democratic  majority  is  swinging 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  111 

its  sombrero  and  cracking  its  lungs  howling  for  personal 
liberty ! 

Think  of  throwing  an  American  citizen  into  jail  in  this, 
the  last  decade  of  the  Nineteenth  century,  for  shaving  a 
"sovereign"  or  selling  a  cigar  on  Sunday;  for  an  offense, 
not  against  his  fellow  man  but  against  that  great  God  who 
created  the  heavens  and  the  earth  and  incidentally  "made 
the  stars  also" — threw  them  in  as  lagniappe !  Yes,  think  of 
it;  then  contemplate  a  people  boasting  their  independence 
and  posing  as  the  very  apotheosis  of  progress,  tamely  sub- 
mitting to  such  a  flagrant  infringement  of  their  divine  rights 
and  constitutional  prerogatives ! 

But  "the  old  order  changeth,  yielding  place  to  new."  Our 
English  correspondent  has  probably  heard  that  it  changed  in 
1776.  At  this  time  there  was  in  Great  Britain  a  fat-headed 
fellow  who  played  the  divine  racket  on  the  American  peo- 
ple much  as  the  priests  and  preachers  are  doing  to-day. 
He  assumed  that  he  had  been  divinely  ordained  to  decide 
what  was  best  for  them — that  they  were  in  duty  bound  to 
obey,  pay  taxes  and  look  pleasant.  They  took  his  presump- 
tion in  good  part  for  a  great  many  years,  but  when  he  got 
to  rubbing  it  in  they  grew  restless  and  began  to  file  pro- 
tests— much  as  they  are  doing  now,  and  with  the  same  un- 
satisfactory results.  At  that  time  to  question  the  preroga- 
tive of  princes  to  do  as  they  pleased  with  the  common  people 
was  regarded  as  almost  as  great  a  sin  as  "Sabbath  desecra- 
tion" is  to-day,  and  as  King  George  was  in  the  majority  he 
simply  sneered  at  the  recalcitrants,  rubbed  a  little  more  holy 
oil  on  his  divine  right  and  went  ahead  with  his  hog-killing. 
Finally  the  famous  tea  party,  which  had  been  so  long  brew- 
ing, was  held  in  Boston  harbor  and  for  eight  long  years 
there  was  h — 1  to  pay  and  a  distressing  stringency  in  the 
money  market.  Another  tea  party  is  rapidly  getting  ripe, 
and  when  it  is  over  and  the  cups  and  saucers  returned  to  the 
cupboard  there'll  be  no  "blue  laws"  in  Uncle  Sam's  baili- 
wick, costly  churches  will  be  taxed  just  the  same  as  the  poor 
man's  cottage,  and  legislators  who  desire  to  indulge  in  the 
luxury  of  $5~a-minute  Protestant  prayers  will  not  rob  Cath- 
olic, infidel  and  Jewish  pantries  to  pay  the  sacred  wind- 
jammer, but  go  down  into  their  own  jeans  for  the  price  of 
saving  Grace. 

We  could  stand  taxation  for  church  purposes  without 
representation  in  the  amen  corner  if  our  sanctified  brethren 
would  refrain  from  adding  injuries  that  benefit  nobody,  then 
presenting  us  with  choice  specimens  of  unprovoked  inso- 
lence simply  to  reduce  their  superabundant  stock ;  but  when 


112  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

a  man  cheerfully  puts  up  his  pro-rata  for  perfunctory  pray- 
ers and  the  exemption  of  church  property  from  all  taxation, 
then  finds  himself  persistently  boycotted  both  in  politics  and 
business  by  the  people  he  has  befriended,  denounced  from 
the  pulpit  as  an  emissary  of  the  devil  by  flannelmouthed 
preachers  who  are  indirectly  fattening-  upon  his  substance, 
and  rendered  an  abject  slave  one-seventh  of  his  life  by  the 
laws  of  his  native  land  simply  because  an  emperor  who  died 
1,500  years  ago  was  an  unmitigated  ass,  he  feels  like  ex- 
changing his  stock  of  Christian  charity  for  a  stuffed  club 
and  asserting  his  rights  as  a  free-born  American  citizen. 

Nearly  nineteen  centuries  ago  Christ  informed  the  Phar- 
isees that  "the  Sabbath  was  made  for  man,  and  not  man  for 
the  Sabbath,"  but  that  extensive  sect  of  sacred  mummers 
still  cling  tenaciously  to  the  interdicted  dogma.  They  de- 
clare it  criminal  to  do  on  Sunday  what  is  eminently  proper 
on  other  days,  and,  being  in  a  majority,  they  enact  an  iron- 
clad law  compelling  Jew  and  Gentile  to  conform  to  their 
theological  faith.  And  what  excuse  have  they  to  offer  for 
this  insolent  interference  with  individual  liberty,  the  abro- 
gation of  that  "freedom  of  conscience"  guaranteed  us  by 
the  Conscript  Fathers?  Sam  Jones  sums  it  up  when  he 
says:  "The  citizen  has  no  right  to  do  wrong."  True,  oh 
reverend  blather-skite ;  but  who  authorized  you  to  decide  for 
the  American  citizen  what  is  right  and  wrong,  theologically 
considered?  Produce  your  credentials,  Sir  Garrulity,  or 
come  off  the  grass.  Another  lippy  member  of  the  black 
army — Talmage,  I  believe — has  told  us  that  "the  majority 
has  a  right  to  say  how  the  Sabbath  shall  be  observed."  In- 
deed? Then  it  also  has  a  right  to  say  what  day  shall  be 
accepted  as  the  Sabbath  by  the  entire  people ;  hence  it  fol- 
lows that  if  the  Jews  and  Seventh  Day  Adventists  should 
eventually  find  themselves  in  the  majority  they  would  be 
privileged  to  make  Saturday  the  legal  Sabbath  and  compel 
its  rigid  observance  as  such  by  all  other  sects.  The  con- 
sistent Christian  could  then  harvest  his  hooppoles  or  dig 
fishbait  on  the  first  day  of  the  week  "in  the  fear  of  the 
Lord."  Having  issued  his  ipse  dixit,  we  invite  Brother 
Talmage  to  loaf  around^it  and  see  how  he  likes  it.  This 
being  the  country  of  majority  rule  in  religion  as  well  as  in 
matters  mundane,  it  follows  that  what  is  sauce  for  the  Chris- 
tian goose  is  sauce  for  the  Hebrew  gander. 

Good  soul,  who  made  thee  thy  brother's  keeper?  Where 
in  the  constitution  of  your  country  or  the  teachings  of  your 
Saviour  do  you  learn  it  to  be  your  duty  to  lay  violent  hands 
upon  a  worldling  and  drag  him,  squirming  and  kicking — 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  113 

perhaps  cursing — to  the  Throne  of  God?  Produce  your 
authority  for  employing  the  jails  of  this  country  to  propa- 
gate the  Christian  religion — for  cramming  its  forms  and 
symbols  down  the  throat  of  thy  fellow  man  with  a  police- 
man's bludgeon.  What  is  it  to  thee  if  I  till  my  field,  sell 
my  goods  or  list  to  some  aspiring  Roscious  spout  Eurip- 
ides on  Sunday?  Does  it  compel  thee  to  do  likewise? 
Does  it  interfere  with  your  freedom  or  abridge  your  prero- 
gatives, endanger  your  health  or  cost  you  a  copper?  Will 
the  blessed  Saviour  compel  you  to  answer  for  my  sins  and 
send  you  to  hades  as  a  "vicarous  atonement"  while  I  roost 
on  some  roseate  cloud  in  company  with  a  halo  and  a  harp 
and  attended  by  a  choice  assortment  of  she-angels!  No? 
Then  please  to  forbear  further  interference  in  my  affairs. 
If  I  feel  the  need  of  your  assistance  to  reach  the  Throne  of 
Grace  I'll  so  inform  you.  I  may  prefer  to  deal  with  the 
Almighty  direct  and  without  the  officious  intervention  of  a 
middle-man — to  map  out  my  own  path  to  the  heavenly  here- 
after without  the  assistance  of  a  theological  surveyor.  Your 
religion  is  really  bile  instead  of  benevolence.  Instead  of  a 
crown  you  need  a  cathartic.  You  have  mistaken  an  abnor- 
mal itch  for  meddling  for  the  promptings  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 
You  prattle  about  the  "desecration  of  the  Sabbath"  when 
the  very  niggers  know  that  Christ  had  no  more  to  do  with 
its  establishment  than  Moses  with  making  the  Fourth  of 
July  an  American  holiday — that  it  was  not  sanctioned  by  the 
Father,  the  Son  or  any  of  the  original  Saints.  You  would, 
if  clothed  with  plenary  power,  compel  every  son  of  Adam  to 
accept  your  narrow-gauge  creed  and  "worship  God  accord- 
ing to  the  dictates  of  your  so-called  conscience  instead  of  his 
own.  You  have  altogether  mistaken  the  spirit  and  ignored 
the  letter  of  that  message  which  Christ  brought  to  mankind. 
It  was  a  message  of  Love  and  Liberty,  while  you  are  the 
apostle  of  Slavery,  the  apotheosis  of  Persecution. 

"Come  unto  me,  all  ye  that  labor,  and  are  heavy  laden, 
and  I  will  give  you  rest,"  saith  the  Lord.  "Jog  along  to 
your  Jesus  or  go  to  jail,"  says  the  state.  When  encom- 
passed by  his  enemies  in  the  Garden  of  Gethsemane  Christ 
rebuked  that  follower  who  employed  force  in  his  defense. 

"Put  up  again  thy  sword  into  his  place ;  for  all  they  that 
take  the  sword  shall  perish  by  the  sword." 

Yet  his  so-called  followers  here  in  Texas  rely  upon  the 
sword,  not  to  protect  their  dear  Lord  from  ignominious 
death,  but  to  prevent  some  impecunious  publican  wrecking 
the  New  Jerusalem  and  throwing  Omnipotent  God  into  a 
fit  of  the  sulks  by  selling  a  popcorn  ball  on  Sunday. 


114  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

assume  that  every  utterance  of  the  Saviour  was  a  divine 
truth  which  must,  perforce,  be  fulfilled  to  the  very  letter, 
yet  persist  in  playing  with  edge-tools. 

That  religion  which  must  rely  upon  secular  law  is  inher- 
ently rotten.  That  religion  which  appeals  to  brute  force  to 
secure  respect  is  not  of  God  but  the  devil,  therefore,  not 
worthy  of  the  devotion  of  a  yaller  dog. 

"But  Sunday  laws  are  necessary  as  a  police  regulation," 
I  am  told.  Indeed?  Is  there  aught  in  the  Lord's  day  cal- 
culated to  multiply  criminal  deeds?  Is  it  possible  that 'extra 
precautions  must  be  taken  on  Emperor  Constantine's  "Holy 
Sabbath"  to  stay  the  hand  of  the  homicide?  Can  it  be  that 
when  a  million  Christian  prayers  are  ascending  like  incense 
to  the  Throne  of  God — and  ten  thousand  preachers  turning 
an  honest  penny — that  people  are  seized  with  an  unnatural 
impulse  to  despoil  their  neighbors  ?  This  being  the  conceded 
effect  of  the  Christian  Sabbath  it  would  appear  desirable  to 
abolish  it  altogether  "as  a  police  regulation,"  and  the  quicker 
the  better. 


NO  CROSS-EYED  CLERGYMEN. 

The  Methodist  Episcopal  Conference,  recently  assembled 
in  New  York,  created  something  of  a  sensation  by  rejecting 
a  candidate  for  clerical  honors  because  he  was  cross-eyed. 
He  had  studied  three  years  for  the  ministry  and  outstripped 
all  his  classmates,  was  admittedly  intelligent  and  of  unex- 
ceptionable morals ;  but  strabismus  was  regarded  by  the  theo- 
logical solons  as  an  insuperable  objection,  and  he  was  re- 
jected. Many  worthy  brethren  have  sharply  criticised  the 
action  of  the  conference,  but  The  Iconoclast  is  inclined  to 
commend  it.  No  man  who  can  look  two  "ways  at  once  has 
any  business  in  the  Methodist  ministry;  he  might  see  too 
much  for  a  successful  exponent  of  sectarianism.  Further- 
more, those  sanctified  gentlemen  who  assembled  in  the  me- 
tropolis of  the  most  enlightened  nation  the  world  ever  knew, 
were  obeying  the  imperative  command  of  the  Creator  as 
expressed  in  the  Bible,  hence  a  criticism  of  their  action  were 
akin  to  blasphemy.  In  the  Twenty-first  chapter  of  Leviticus 
we  learn  that 

"The  Lord  spake  unto  Moses,  saying,  Speak  unto  Aaron  saying, 
Whosoever  he  be  of  thy  seed  in  their  generations  that  hath  any 
blemish,  let  him  not  approach  to  offer  the  bread  of  his  God;  for 
whatsoever  man  he  be  that  hath  a  blemish,  he  shall  not  approach: 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  115 

A  blind  man;  or  a  lame,  or  he  that  hath  a  flat  nose,  or  anything 
superfluous;  or  a  man  that  is  broken-footed,  or  broken-handed,  or 
crook-backed,  or  a  dwarf,  or  that  hath  a  blemish  in  his  eye,  or  be 
scurvy,  or  scabbed,  or  hath  his  stones  broken  ...  he  shall  not 
go  into  the  vail  nor  come  nigh  unto  the  altar,  because  he  hath  a 
blemish;  that  he  profane  not  my  sanctuaries." 

No  intellectual  qualifications  whatever  were  suggested, 
they  evidently  being  considered  as  superfluous — it  was  sim- 
ply stipulated  that  the  priest,  like  the  sacrificial  bull,  should 
be  a  perfect  animal,  and  that  he  attire  himself  in  "garments 
for  glory  and  beauty."  To  the  credit  of  the  various  relig- 
ious denominations  be  it  said  that  in  selecting  their  priests 
and  preachers  they  have  adhered  pretty  closely  to  the  orig- 
inal plans  and  specifications.  Whenever  they  have  departed 
therefrom  in  any  marked  degree  a  heresy  trial  has  been 
sent  to  trouble  them — a  swift  and  awful  "judgment"  for 
their  sin. 

Whether  the  Lord  really  gave  such  a  command  to  Moses, 
or  the  latter  dreamed  it  while  lying  in  the  dusky  arms  of 
his  Ethiopian  wife,  it  is  not  my  province  to  determine;  but 
as  a  general  law,  intended  to  cull  out  the  slick  stock  for  the 
clergy,  it  has  much  to  commend  it.  It  »were  clearly  absurd 
to  select  the  finest  specimens  of  physical  manhood  to 
defend  the  country  from  fellow  mortals,  leaving  the 
"scurvy"  and  the  "scabbed"  to  lead  the  scattering  army  of 
the  Lord  against  the  legions  of  the  devil.  Whether  flat 
heads  be  preferable  to  flat  noses,  crooked  morals  to  curved 
backs  and  spavined  intellect  to  procreative  impotence,  can 
not  be  considered  by  the  truly  orthodox  as  a  debatable  ques- 
tion. 

Now  that  the  Methodist  church  has  undertaken  to  make 
its  ministry  conform  to  the  Mosaic  standard  we  trust  that 
it  will  not  weary  in  well-doing,  but  make  thorough  work 
of  it.  The  Iconoclast,  as  the  unswerving  friend  of  religious 
reform,  suggests  that  each  candidate  be  subjected  to  a  rigid 
medical  examination  and  a  system  of  physical  tests  in 
order  that  the  ministerial  stud  may  consist  exclusively  of 
thoroughbreds.  It  would  first  be  necessary  to  take  the 
aspirant's  altitude,  as  "Little  Giants"  were  not  considered 
eligible  by  the  God  of  the  Jews.  Having  found  that  his 
coat-tails  hung  sufficiently  far  from  the  earth,  the  next  step 
will  be  to  bring  him  in  purls  naturalibus  before  the  board  of 
examiners,  who  will  determine  whether  he  has  "'anything 
superfluous,"  then  either  fire  him  out  or  forward  him  on  to 
the  officiating  Muldoon  to  be  tested  in  "wind  and  limb.  Hav- 
ing passed  this  ordeal  successfully,  his  eyes  will  be  exam- 


116  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

ined  by  an  expert  oculist,  and  if  it  be  found  that  he  can 
look  through  a  keyhole  with  both  at  once,  this  fact  will 
be  duly  certified  and  a  civil  engineer  appointed  to  survey 
his  proboscis  and  make  report.  If  he  finds  that  it  is  an 
incipient  mountain  peak  instead  of  a  lowly  campagna  the 
candidate  will  be  duly  licensed  to  preach — to  carry  saving 
grace  to  godless  sinners. 

It  is  imperative  that  we  have  in  our  fashionable  pulpits 
preachers  who  will  harmonize  with  their  recherche  sur- 
roundings. Placing  a  hunchback,  a  cross-eyed  man  or  one 
with  an  amorphous  snout  like  that  of  old  Socrates  amid 
the  gorgeous  trappings  of  a  hundred  thousand  dollar  tem- 
ple were  an  insufferable  sin  against  the  estheticism  of  the 
age.  True,  Christ  was  no  brute,  if  we  may  believe  Isaiah, 
who  we  are  assured  was  referring  to  the  Saviour  when  he 
said:  "His  visage  was  more  marred  than  any  man,  and 
his  form  than  the  sons  of  men."  The  Jews  "saw  no  beauty 
in  him,"  and  the  Rev.  George  C.  Needham,  in  his  appendix 
to  the  Bible,  intimates  that  physically  he  was  a  fright. 
St.  Paul  was  so  horribly  homely  that  the  ladies  avoided 
him,  and  he  played  for  even  by  putting-  a  time-lock  on  their 
mouths  and  discountenancing  marriage.  None  of  the 
Apostles,  so  far  as  we  can  gather,  were  calculated  to  adorn 
a  fashionable  pulpit  or  cause  the  hearts  of  the  sisters  to  pal- 
pitate with  suspicious  piety.  They  traveled  extensively, 
but  not  on  their  shape.  But  we  are  building  neither 
churches  nor  ministers  on  the  model  supplied  us  by  the 
Son  of  Mary.  This  is  "a  progressive  age" — and  the  Metho- 
dist church  has  at  last  caught  up  with  Moses. 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE. 

The  so-called  Monroe  Doctrine  has  kept  Uncle  Sam  in 
hot  water  for  three-quarters  of  a  century  and  bids  fair  to 
embroil  him  in  one  of  the  bloodiest  wars  known  to  the 
world's  history  if  he  persists  in  exploiting  it.  In  1823, 
when  it  was^  suspected  that  the  Holy  Alliance  would  attempt 
to  ^  re-establish  Spain's  dominion  over  her  revolted  col- 
onies, President  Monroe,  in  a  message  to  Congress,  enunci- 
ated the  "doctrine"  that  bears  his  name,  but  which  doubt- 
less emanated  from  that  eminent  jingoist,  John  Quincy 
Adams,  then  Secretary  of  State.  Monroe  declared  that  the 
American  continents  "are  henceforth  not  to  be  considered 
as  subjects  for  future  colonization  by  any  European  Power," 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  117 

and  particularly  warned  the  respective  members  of  the 
Holy  Alliance  that  "we  should  consider  any  attempt  on 
their  part  to  extend  their  system  to  any  portion  of  the  west- 
ern hemisphere  as  dangerous  to  our  peace  and  safety." 
Then,  to  make  his  meaning  so  plain  that  none  might  mis- 
take it,  he  added,  referring  to  the  cisatlantic  governments 
then  struggling  for  life,  that  "we  could  not  view  any  inter- 
position for  the  purpose  of  oppressing  them  or  controlling 
in  any  other  manner  their  destiny,  by  any  European  Power, 
in  any  other  light  than  as  the  manifestation  of  an  unfriendly 
disposition  toward  the  United  States." 

If  that  means  anything  whatsoever  it  means  that  the 
United  States  has  established  a  quasi-protectorate  over  the 
smaller  American  governments,  so  far  as  Europe  is  con- 
cerned— that  Uncle  Sam  is  the  self-constituted  bouncer  of 
the  western  hemisphere  and  proposes  to  serve  without 
salary.  Several  Texas  dailies  have  consumed  considerable 
editorial  space  trying  to  give  it  a  different  construction; 
but  unless  we  agree  with  Talleyrand  that  "language  was 
made  to  conceal  thought,"  we  must  concede  that  the  Mon- 
roe pronunciamento  means  exactly  what  it  says.  Jefferson 
was  consulted  on  the  subject  by  the  Monroe  administration 
before  the  delivery  of  the  message  and  he  declared,  after 
referring  to  the  importance  of  the  question,  that  "we  should 
never  suffer  Europe  to  intermeddle  with  cisatlantic  affairs." 
Webster,  who  certainly  understood  the  English  tongue, 
gave  it  this  interpretation  and  his  hearty  endorsement  so 
far  as  those  countries  bordering  on  the  Mexican  gulf  are 
concerned.  It  is  urged  by  certain  political  sophists  that, 
even  conceding  the  message  to  have  meant  all  it  said,  and 
to  constitute  our  policy  to-day,  it  does  not  follow  that  we 
would  take  up  arms  to  enforce  it.  To  assume  that  Uncle 
Sam  would  solemnly  warn  European  governments  to  keep 
off  the  cisatlantic  grass,  then  fail  to  back  his  bluff  with 
powder  and  ball ;  that  he  would  suffer  his  "peace  and  safety" 
to  be  endangered  without  writing  his  protest  in  blood  if 
need  be,  were  to  brand  him  a  cowardly  bully. 

The  Monroe  Doctrine  declares  in  diplomatic  but  unequi- 
vocal language  that  if  Europe  monkeys  with  any  portion  of 
the  western  hemisphere  which  has  set  up  political  house- 
keeping for  itself,  she  will  run  afoul  of  the  American  eagle, 
and  there'll  be,  as  Sam  Jones  would  say  in  his  aesthetic 
pulpit  vernacular,  "blood  and  hair  and  the  ground  tore  up." 
It  assumes  our  right  to  inquire  into  such  controversies  as 
that  of  England  vs.  Venezuela,  and  to  interfere,  if  need  be, 
to  prevent  "oppression"  by  the  transatlantic  Power,  or 


118  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

any  tampering  with  the  "destiny"  of  the  little  Republic. 
Such  is  the  common-sense  construction  of  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine by  the  world's  diplomats;  so  it  has  been  understood 
for  two-and-seventy  years  by  the  people  of  every  American 
government. 

The  Monroe  Doctrine,  like  a  defunct  feline  in  the  family 
cistern,  can  not  be  explained  away ;  it  must  be  removed. 
It  is  illogical,  useless,  productive  of  nothing  but  interna- 
tional ill-will.  A  protectorate  implies  responsibilities.  If 
we  will  not  permit  European  Powers  to  forcibly  collect  their 
dues  of  our  neighbors  or  chastise  their  insolence,  we  become 
morally  bound  for  their  debts  and  responsible  for  their  be- 
havior. The  Monroe  Doctrine  not  only  denies  to  Spain  the 
right  to  reconquer  Mexico,  but  would  prevent  the  latter 
again  becoming  a  Spanish  province  by  the  expressed  will 
of  her  people,  hence  it  is  the  tool  of  tyranny  as  well  as  the 
aegis  of  Liberty. 

What  can  this  country  hope  to  gain  by  playing  continent- 
al policeman  at  its  own  expense?  Monroe  declares  that 
we  must  consider  the  extension  of  European  authority  "to 
any  portion  of  this  hemisphere  as  dangerous  to  our  peace 
and  safety."  But  that  was  seventy-two  years  ago,  when  Uncle 
Sam  was  in  his  swaddling  clothes  and,  quite  naturally, 
much  concerned  about  the  character  of  his  neighbors.  But 
time  has  amply  demonstrated  the  uselessness  of  Monroe's 
anxiety.  England  owns  everything  to  the  north  and  other 
European  Powers  once  controlled  everything  to  the  south 
and  west  of  us,  including  a  large  tract  of  our  present  terri- 
tory, yet  the  bird  o'  freedom  never  moulted  a  feather.  If 
John  Bull  should  put  all  South  America  into  his  capacious 
political  pocket  it  would  in  nowise  endanger  the  "peace 
and  safety"  of  Uncle  Sam.  The  Briton  could  not  turn  the 
wild  beasts  and  reptiles  of  that  practically  unpopulated 
region  loose  upon  us  as  he  did  the  redskins  during  the 
Revolution.  In  case  of  war  such  possession  would  weaken 
him,  and  he  would  be  unable  to  hold  it  after  it  became 
worth  the  having.  As  soon  as  the  American  colonies  quit 
calling  on  him  for  troops  to  defend  their  frontier  they  arose 
and  smote  him  in  the  umbilicus,  and  we  have  to  close  the 
door  to  keep  Canada  from  coming  into  the  Union — and 
bringing  her  sky-scraping  Dominion  debt  with  her.  Spain 
lost  Mexico  and  her  South  American  possessions  and  is 
having  a  hades  of  a  time  holding  Cuba.  Brazil  slipped 
through  the  fingers  of  Portugal  like  a  greased  pig,  France 
has  practically  faded  from  the  map  of  the  New  World,  and 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  119 

even  the  kindly  offices  of  Grover  Cleveland  could  not  keep 
monarchy  alive  in  the  mid-Pacific. 

Really  we  need  not  worry  about  any  seed  the  European 
monarchies  may  sow  in  American  soil.  The  climate  is  not 
adapted  to  that  kind  of  a  political  crop.  About  the  time 
it  gets  a  good  start  and  promises  to  make  a  bale  to  the 
acre  a  revolutionary  cyclone  rips  it  up  by  the  roots.  It  is 
not  necessary  that  this  government — the  most  powerful  on 
the  globe — should  "view  with  alarm"  every  European  foot- 
print in  the  western  world,  nor  is  it  under  any  obligation  to 
afford  protection  at  its  own  expense  to  opera  bouffe  Repub- 
lics. About  the  first  thing  a  Spanish  American  government 
does  after  donning  its  initial  diaper,  is  to  flagrantly  insult 
the  American  flag.  Uncle  Sam  had  serious  trouble  with 
Mexico,  and  the  heteroscian  pismires  are  continually  crawl- 
ing up  the  old  man's  pants.  There  is  not  a  country  between 
our  southern  boundary  and  the  Antartic  circle  in  which  an 
American  citizen  is  safe  from  official  insult ;  yet  whenever  a 
European  Power  proposes  to  hold  one  of  these  single-shovel 
"Republics"  up  by  the  ear  and  pound  the  impudence  out 
of  it,  it  turns  to  us  for  protection.  They  are  Republics  de 
jure  but  despotisms  de  facto,  and  the  cause  of  Liberty  would 
suffer  no  loss  if  they  were  all  made  subject  to  the  Russian 
czar.  Madame  Roland  truly  said  that  many  crimes  are 
committed  in  the  name  of  Liberty,  but  even  she  never 
dreamed  of  aught  so  damnable  as  the  wholesale  sacrifice  of 
Anglo-Saxons  at  the  foolish  shrine  of  a  mongrel  despotism 
masquerading  in  the  robe  of  Freedom.  Uncle  Sam  has 
been  starring  in  the  ridiculous  role  of  Don  Quixote  quite 
long  enough,  and  should  now  give  the  Spanish  cavaleros 
and  half-civilized  Aborigines  to  the  south  of  us  to  distinctly 
understand  that  they  must  work  out  their  own  salvation ; 
that  he  desires  "Peace,  commerce  and  honest  friendship 
with  all  nations — entangling  alliances  with  none." 


THE   LOCOMOTIVE   ENGINEER. 

The  locomotive  engineer  is  to  the  village-bred  boy  of  to- 
day what  the  stage-driver  was  to  the  youth  of  his  grandsire. 
The  brakeman  who  can  ride  all  day  on  top  of  a  box  car, 
and  the  passenger-train  conductor,  with  his  gaudy  cap  and 
Mardi  Gras  lantern,  pale  into  insignificance  beside  the  man 
who  manages  the  iron  horse.  Machinery  possesses  a  weird 
fascination  for  the  American  youth,  and  the  locomotive  is 


120  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

to  all  other  mechanism  what  a  shotgun  is  to  a  "nigger- 
shooter."  It  adds  to  its  attractions  the  romance  of  travel — 
is  to  the  boys  of  the  interior  what  a  ship  is  to  those  reared 
within  the  sound  of  the  sea. 

At  the  age  of  ten  I  was  so  infatuated  with  locomotives 
that  to  get  possession  of  one  I  stole  an  entire  freight  train. 
It  was  standing  on  the  main  track  in  my  native  village, 
the  crew  had  abandoned  it  to  investigate  a  big  watermelon 
which  the  station  agent  had  opened,  and  I  improved  the 
opportunity  to  penetrate  the  mysteries  of  the  engineer's 
cab.  I  had  no  intention  of  meddling  with  the  iron  monster, 
but  when  I  got  my  hand  on  the  lever  the  temptation  to 
set  the  big  drivers  in  motion  was  too  strong  to  be  resisted. 
The  train  started  so  easily  that  it  did  not  attract  the  attention 
of  the  hilarious  crew  in  the  freight-house  until  it  went  roar- 
ing across  Flat  Branch  bridge  and  on  towards  Mattoon  at 
a  good  round  gait.  I  decided  that  I  might  as  well  be 
hanged  for  an  old  sheep  as  a  lamb,  and  pulled  the  throttle 
open  a  little  wider,  whistling  and  ringing  the  bell  for  all 
the  crossings  and  pretty  much  everything  else  in  sight.  A 
mule  got  on  the  track  in  front  of  me,  and  I  was  so  fearful 
he  would  escape  that  I  gave  the  lever  another  lusty  pull. 
The  train  fairly  bounded  forward  and  the  telegraph  poles 
seemed  thick  as  fence  posts.  I  got  the  mule — spread  him 
all  over  the  smoke-stack.  By  this  time  I  had  the  lever 
down  among  the  tallow  pots — was  making  the  highest  speed 
the  machine  was  capable  of.  The  great  iron  monster 
swayed  and  groaned,  the  cars  seemed  bowing  to  both  sides 
of  the  right-o'-way,  and  I  was  delirious  with  joy.  Mattoon 
was  in  sight,  and  I  determined  to  go  through  the  town  like 
a  whirlwind,  on  to  Cairo  and  take  a  look  at  the  two  big 
rivers.  I  was  leaning  out  of  the  cab  window  trying  to  make 
out  the  figures  on  the  mile-posts  when  I  was  suddenly  pulled 
by  the  ear.  Instead  of  joining  the  watermelon  debauch 
the  conductor  had  lain  down  in  the  caboose  and  gone  to 
sleep.  When  the  "dog  house"  began  to  dance  on  one  wheel 
he  awoke  and  realized  that  there  was  something  wrong. 
He  crawled  over  the  boxes  at  the  imminent  risk  of  his  life 
to  expostulate  with  the  engineer.  While  he  was  bringing 
the  train  to  a  standstill  I  debated  whether  I  should  run 
away  or  go  back  home  and  take  the  worst  licking  of  my  life. 
The  conductor  solved  the  problem  for  me ;  I  went  back.  I 
have  a  very  vivid  recollection  of  the  events  immediately  sub- 
sequent thereto,  but  as  they  could  not  possibly  possess  that 
absorbing  interest  for  the  general  public  that  they  did  for 
me  I  will  let  them  pass. 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  121 

The  locomotive  engineers  constitute  a  peculiar  class  that 
is  neither  understood  nor  appreciated  by  the  general  public. 
Sober,  silent,  alert,  with  the  time-table  for  their  Bible  and 
the  train  dispatcher's  written  orders  for  their  creed,  they  dis- 
charge their  dangerous  duty.  If  a  soldier  loses  his  little 
finger  in  the  service  of  his  country  he  is  voted  a  hero  and 
given  a  pension.  When  a  locomotive  engineer  deliberately 
goes  to  his  death  to  protect  the  lives  of  others  and  the  prop- 
erty committed  to  his  care,  his  reward  is  a  few  lines  in  the 
daily  press.  Such  occurrences  are  too  common  to  excite 
comment. 

If  all  the  dangers  of  the  rail  were  as  patent  to  the  public 
as  to  the  man  at  the  throttle  there  would  be  precious  little 
traveling  for  "pleasure."  The  public  hears  only  of  the  ac- 
cidents that  occur,  not  of  the  thousands  averted  by  the  cool 
judgment  and  leonine  courage  of  the  man  in  the  cab. 
Mounted  upon  his  iron  steed,  with  its  heart  of  fire  and 
breath  of  flame,  he  goes  rushing  through  the  midnight  storm 
at  the  rate  of  50  miles  an  hour,  dragging  in  his  "wake  a  heavy 
train  filled  with  precious  human  freight.  He  may  know 
that  the  speed  is  too  rapid  for  either  the  track  or  rolling 
stock,  but  the  time-table  calls  for  it  and  it  must  come.  Per- 
haps around  the  next  curve  he  will  find  a  culvert  washed 
out  or  the  track  obstructed  by  a  "cave-in."  The  rails  may 
spread  out  at  any  moment,  or  the  next  switch  be  misplaced. 
Sleepy  dispatchers  sometimes  blunder  and  a  collision  may 
occur;  but  he  can  only  keep  his  eye  on  the  slippery  track, 
his  hand  on  the  lever,  and  go  plunging  on.  If  an  accident 
occurs  those  in  the  coaches  must  escape  with  only  a  shak- 
ing up,  regardless  of  what  happens  to  him.  He  must  stand 
at  his  post  like  a  Roman  sentinel  tho'  the  heavens  rain  fire. 

To  the  man  at  the  throttle  his  engine  is  no  dull,  dead 
piece  of  mechanism,  but  a  living,  sentient  creature,  to  be 
praised  when  it  does  well  and  rebuked  when  it  does  ill.  It 
responds  to  his  touch  like  a  well  trained  steed  and  he  be- 
comes devotedly  attached  to  it — talks  to  it  as  a  good  jockey 
does  to  his  horse. 

It  is  the  end  of  a  long  night  run  with  a  heavy  train,  on  a 
sinuous,  ill-constructed  '  track — a  veritable  serpent  of  rust 
resting  upon  rotten  ties.  The  engineer  has  scarce  spoken 
a  word  except  to  quote  a  little  sacred  blank  verse  when  the 
new  brakeman,  who  had  turned  a  switch  to  let  him  in  on 
a  siding,  turned  it  back  to  let  him  out.  Even  his  orders  to 
the  fireman  are  given  by  a  motion  of  the  hand.  But  as  we 
strike  the  stiff  home  grade  his  demeanor  changes.  He 


122  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

uncurls  from  his  bench  and  looks  back  at  the  train,  then 
surveys  his  engine  as  though  measuring  its  strength. 

"Now,  old  girl,  you've  got  to  hustle  for  it.  Pull  yourself 
together  and  sand  your  feet.  Here,  here !  no  skirt-dancing, 
madam!  This  is  no  John  Bell  joint.  Steady,  old  girl — 
steady/' 

The  great  machine  plunges  at  the  grade  and  struggles 
like  a  living  creature,  the  sharp  puffs  waking  the  echoes 
far  and  wide  amid  the  sombre  pines,  upon  whose  tall  tops 
rests  the  morning  mist,  reddened  by  the  rising  sun.  The 
engineer  coaxes,  as  a  driver  might  a  willing  horse,  and  the 
machine,  which  seems  to  understand  him,  responds  with 
greater  exertions,  but  the  heavy  loads  roll  slower  and  slow- 
er, the  drivers  slip  despite  the  sand,  emitting  a  million  me- 
tallic sparks — the  "old  girl"  is  stalled.  A  short,  sharp 
whistle,  that  sounds  like  the  shriek  of  some  sentient  animal 
for  aid,  the  three  rear  brakes  are  hard  set,  and  up  on  this 
buttress  the  train  rolls  slowly  back.  The  engineer  is  pre- 
paring to  "take  the  slack."  His  engine  is  no  longer  "old 
girl"  and  "sweatheart,"  but  the  most  disreputable  drab  that 
ever  inhabited  Happy  Hollow — or  got  listed  in  the  blue 
book  of  New  York's  Four  Hundred.  Locomotive  en- 
gineers are  not  much  addicted  to  gab — they  are  nothing  if 
not  epigrammatic — and  when  they  speak  are  liable  to  say 
something.  The  engine  stands  for  a  minute  as  tho'  heartily 
ashamed  of  itself,  panting  like  a  brown  roadster,  then 
springs  forward  with  a  bound.  The  cars  follow,  each  in  its 
turn,  with  a  rattling  jerk  that  tests  the  drawheads,  until 
the  last  are  reached,  when  the  brakes  are  quickly  released, 
and  "madam,"  having  retrieved  her  moral  character,  goes 
puffing  proudly  into  port. 

A  year  later  I  sat  by  the  bedside  of  the  same  engineer 
while  he  breathed  his  life  away — crushed  and  scalded  at  the 
post  of  duty.  Again  he  was  out  on  his  "run,"  striving 
desperately  to  make  time  with  a  heavy  train. 

"The  last  grade,  my  girl;  climb  that  and  we're  home. 
Molly's  waiting,  and  so  are  the  kids,  to  see  you  come  round 
the  curve.  What!  Can't  keep  your  feet?  You  must  do 
better  than  that  or  we'll  never  get  in.  How  dark  it  is ! 
Tom,  did  you  douse  that  glim  ?  I  can't  see  the  rails !  There's 
the  station  light — now  we  roll — now — we — "  and  he  had 
climbed  the  "last  grade." 

No  one  troubled  with  what  is  sometimes  called  "nerves" 
has  the  least  business  with  a  locomotive.  To  manage  one 
and  at  the  same  time  enjoy  good  health  requires  not  only 
superior  courage,  but  a  stoicism  worthy  of  a  Sioux  warrior. 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  -123 

The  locomotive  engineers  shoulder  graver  responsibilities 
and  face  more  dangers  than  almost  any  other  class  of  men 
that  could  be  mentioned.  And  this  for  a  salary  that  would 
not  satisfy  a  competent  book-keeper. 

One  night,  while  northbound  with  the  Fast  Mail,  we  re- 
ceived orders  to  look  out  for  a  brakeman  "who  was  supposed 
to  have  fallen  from  a  southbound  freight. 

"Who  is  it?"  asked  the  engineer. 

"Damfino,"  replied  the  pert  young  operator.  "Think 
it's  the  Scotchman  they  call  Sandy.  What's  the  matter, 
old  man?  Seen  a  ghost?"  But  the  engineer  climbed  into 
the  cab  without  a  word.  There  was  something  in  his  throat 
that  would  not  permit  of  words. 

"You  d — d  fool,  Sandy's  his  son,"  said  the  conductor  as 
he  gave  the  signal  to  go  ahead.  I  offered  to  handle  the  en- 
gine, but  he  only  shook  his  head. 

We  are  an  hour  late  and  are  expected  to  move  as  fast  as 
"66"  can  turn  a  wheel.  A  heavy  fog  is  hugging  the  earth 
and  at  a  hundred  yards  the  headlight  resembles  a  splotch 
of  luminous  vapor* — a  tallow  dip  whose  flame  had  liquified. 
We  tear  through  the  fog  like  a  thunderbolt  rending  the 
clouds,  the  buildings  gliding  by  like  ghosts,  the  engineer's 
eyes  fixed  steadily  upon  the  dripping  rails  that  come  rush- 
ing out  of  the  gloom.  He  knows  to  an  inch  what  space 
he  can  stop,  to  a  foot  how  far  he  can  see  into  the  fog.  San- 
dy is  safe  so  far  as  "66"  is  concerned.  Ten  miles,  twenty, 
thirty,  and  still  no  sign  of  the  missing  man,  and  I  can  see 
the  father  is  beginning  to  hope  that  it  is  a  false  alarm ;  but 
suddenly  a  prostrate  figure,  lying  right  across  the  rails, 
comes  rushing  into  view,  so  near  that  an  involuntary  cry 
bursts  from  the  lips  of  the  fireman  and  he  averts  his  face. 
Quick  as  the  lightning's  flash  the  engine  is  reversed  and  the 
air  applied — but  the  latter  will  not  work !  The  engineer 
shrieks  for  the  hand  brakes,  but  it  is  too  late.  The  re- 
versed drivers  churn  the  rails  to  a  red  heat,  but  the  terrible 
momentum  of  the  heavy  train  cannot  be  overcome.  Sandy 
waves  his  hand  to  us,  he  half  rises,  his  white  face  showing 
ghastly  beneath  the  headlight's  glare.  The  sire  dashes 
thro'  the  cab  window  as  tho'  to  snatch  the  son  from  the 
very  jaws  of  death,  but  ere  he  can  reach  the  pilot  it  strikes 
the  upturned  face,  and  we  feel  the  jar  of  the  engine  and  hear 
the  hiss  of  blood  on  the  fire-box  as  he  is  ground  beneath 
the  wheels. 


124  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 


BRANN  VS.   SLATTERY. 

[Ex-Priest  Joseph  Slattery,  in  his  lectures  at  Waco,  Texas,  in 
the  interests  of  the  A.  P.  A.,  having  bitterly  denounced  the 
Iconoclast,  Mr.  Brann  replied  to  him  as  follows:] 

Fellow  Americans:  The  Iconoclast  does  not  please  ex- 
Priest  Slattery,  "Baptist  minister  in  good  standing,"  and  I 
am  not  surprised.  Its  mission,  as  its  name  implies,  is  to 
expose  Frauds  and  abolish  Fakes,  to  make  unrelenting  war 
upon  Humbugs  and  Hypocrites;  hence  it  is  not  remark- 
able that  Slattery  should  regard  its  existence  as  a  personal 
affront.  It  is  ever  the  galled  jade  that  winces;  or,  to  bor- 
row from  the  elegant  pulpit  vernacular  of  the  Rev.  Sam 
Jones,  "it's  the  hit  dog  that  yelps." 

Slattery  would  have  you  believe  that  I'm  a  rank  atheist 
who's  trying  to  rip  religion  up  by  the  roots  and  bang  it 
across  a  barbed  wire  fence  in  close  companionship  with  the 
hides  of  Protestant  preachers  This  charge  has  been 
hurled  at  me  by  various  sectarian  papers  and  malicious  min- 
isters ;  but  not  one  iota  of  evidence  has  ever  been  submitted. 
It  is  simply  a  bald  assertion  born  of  sanctified  malice,  a 
brazen  libel,  similar  to  that  which  charges  the  Pope  with 
trying  to  subvert  the  American  government.  I  defy  Slat- 
tery and  all  that  unclean  brood  of  moral  vultures,  assassins 
of  character  and  thieves  of  reputation  which  trail  in  his 
wake  and  applaud  his  infamies,  to  produce  one  line  I  ever 
wrote,  or  quote  one  sentence  I  ever  uttered  disrespectful 
of  any  religion,  Pagan,  Protestant  or  Catholic.  If  in  the 
wilds  "of  Central  Africa  I  should  find  a  man  bowing  down 
to  a  dried  toad,  a  stuffed  snake  or  a  Slattery,  I'd  remove 
my  hat  as  a  tribute  of  respect,  not  to  his  judgment,  but  to 
his  honesty.  I  have  no  word  of  condemnation  for  any  re- 
ligious faith,  however  fatuous  it  may  appear  to  me,  that  has 
comforted  the  dying  or  consoled  the  living — that  has  cast 
one  gleam  of  supernal  sunshine  into  the  dark  vale  where 
grope,  each  beneath  his  burthen  of  sorrow,  the  sons  of  men. 
I  am  not  warring  upon  religious  faith,  but  on  falsehood ;  not 
upon  Christ,  but  on  those  who  disgrace  his  cause — who 
mistake  bile  for  benevolence,  gall  for  godliness  and  chronic 
laziness  for  "a  call  to  preach." 

Nor  have  I  taken  the  Pope  of  Rome  under  my  apostolic 
protection.  The  Popes  managed  to  exist  for  a  great  many 
years  before  I  was  born,  and,  despite  the  assaults  of  Slattery, 
will  doubtless  continue  in  business  at  the  old  stand  for  sev- 
eral years  to  come.  I  was  raised  a  Protestant,  and — thank 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  125 

God ! — Fin  i  no  apostate.  I  learned  Protestantism  at  my 
mother's  knee,  and  from  my  father's  pulpit;  but  I  did  not 
learn  there  that  the  Church  of  Rome  is  the  "Scarlet 
Woman,"  nuns  unclean  creatures  and  priests  the  sworn 
enemies  of  my  country.  I  learned  that  but  for  the  Church 
of  Rome  the  "glad  tidings  of  great  joy,"  which  Christ 
brought  to  a  dying  world,  would  have  been  irredeemably 
lost  in  that  dismal  intellectual  night  known  as  the  Dark 
Ages.  I  was  taught  that  for  centuries  the  Church  of  Rome 
was  the  repository,  not  only  of  the  Christian  faith,  but  of 
civilization  itself.  I  was  taught  that  the  Catholic  is  the 
mother  of  the  Protestant  church,  and  that  no  matter  how  un- 
worthy a  parent  may  be,  a  child  should  not  become  the  her- 
ald of  its  mother's  shame. 

And  while  being  taught  my  duty  as  a  Protestant,  my  ed- 
ucation as  an  American  citizen  was  not  neglected.  I  was 
taught  that  this  was  a  land  of  religious  liberty,  where  every 
man  is  privileged  to  worship  God  in  his  own  way,  or  ignore 
him  altogether;  that  it  was  my 'duty  to  insist  upon  this  right, 
both  for  myself  and  for  my  fellows. 

That  is  why  I  am  the  uncompromising  enemy  of  the  A. 
P.  A. 

Any  attempt  to  debar  an  American  citizen  from  the  hon- 
ors and  emoluments  of  a  public  office 'because  of  his  reli- 
gious faith,  or  non-faith,  is  a  flagrant  violation  of  a  funda- 
mental principle  of  this  Republic.  And  no  patriot;  no 
man  in  whose  veins  there  pulses  one  drop  of  the  blood  of  the 
Conscript  Fathers,  or  who  would  recognize  the  Goddess  of 
Liberty  if  he  met  her  in  the  road ;  no  man  imbued  with  the 
tolerant  spirit  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  will  aid  or  abet  such 
an  un-Christian  and  un-American  movement.  The  A.  P. 
A.  is  the  bastard  spawn  of  Ignorance  and  Intolerance,  was 
conceived  in  sin  and  brought  forth  in  iniquity. 

There  may  be  some  honest  men  connected  with  the  move- 
ment; but  if  honest  they  should  get  their  heads  trepanned 
to  give  their  brains  room  to  grow.  They  are  as  unable  as 
a  mule-eared  rabbit  to  comprehend  either  the  broad  princi- 
ples upon  which  this  government  is  grounded,  or  its  polit- 
ical and  religious  history.  No  man — not  even  Judas 
Iscariot  Slattery — is  to  blame  for  his  ignorance;  so  we 
should  humbly  pray,  Father  forgive  them,  they  know  not 
what  they  do.  Nor  is  the  Church  of  Rome  responsible 
for  the  shameless  apostate's  lack  of  information.  It  did  all 
that  it  could  to  transform  him  from  an  ignorant  little  beggar 
into  an  educated  gentleman — but  even  the  Pope  cannot 
make  a  silk  purse  of  a  sow's  ear.  It  is  no  fault  of  the 


126  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

Church  of  Rome  that  he's  densely  ignorant  of  the  very  text- 
book truths  of  history ;  that  he  knows  less  than  nothing  of 
that  Reformation  of  which  he  talks  so  glibly ;  that  he  is  un- 
able to  comprehend  the  genius  of  the  government  upon 
which  he  has  conferred  his  more  or  less  valuable  citizenship. 
The  fault,  if  fault  it  be,  lies  with  the  Almighty,  who  gave 
him  a  bad  heart  and  a  worse  head. 


American  Protective  Association,  eh?  That  signifies 
that  Uncle  Sam  is  in  need  of  protection.  I  had  hitherto 
supposed  that  the  gentleman  in  the  highwater  pants  and 
star-bespangled  cutaway  was  able  to  protect  himself;  but  it 
now  appears  that  unless  he  crawls  under  the  aegis  of  the  re- 
doubtable Slattery  he  is — to  again  borrow  from  the  most 
popular  of  all  Protestant  divines — "a  gone  sucker."  Think 
of  placing  Uncle  Sam  under  the  protection  of  a  man  who  is 
an  apostate  in  religion  and  a  renegade  in  politics — of  an 
Irishman  who  apostrophizes  the  British  flag !  Think  of  that 
kind  of  a  bird  presuming  to  tell  the  grand-sons  of  Revolu- 
tionary soldiers  their  duties  as  American  citizens. 

Slattery  assures  us  that  we  need  protection  from  the 
Pope.  There  was  a  time  when  the  proudest  monarchs  of 
Europe  trembled  at  the  Papal  nod ;  but  gradually  the  Pope 
has  been  shorn  of  temporal  power,  confined  ever  more  to 
the  realm  of  spiritual,  until  to-day  he  exerts  about  as  little 
influence  on  the  political  destiny  of  this  world  as  does  Dr. 
Cranfill  with  his  little  Prohibition  craze.  But  Slattery  will 
have  it  that  the  Pope  is  gradually  undermining  American 
institutions — leads  us  to  infer  that,  sooner  or  later,  he'll  blow 
our  blessed  constitution  at  the  moon  and  scatter  fragments 
of  the  Goddess  of  Liberty  from  Dan  to  Beersheba,  from 
Cape  Cod  to  Kalamazoo.  The  Pope,  it  appears,  is  a  veri- 
table Guy  Faux,  who  is  tunnelling  beneath  our  national 
capitol  with  a  keg  of  giant  powder  in  one  hand  and  a  box 
of  lucifer  matches  in  the  other.  What's  the  evidence?  Why, 
out  in  San  Francisco,  so  Slattery  says — but  as  Slattery's 
been  convicted  of  lying  it  were  well  to  call  for  papers — a 
Catholic  school-board  was  elected  and  employed  only  Cath- 
olic teachers.  The  same  awful  thing  happened  in  Detroit — if 
Slattery's  telling  the  truth,  which  is  doubtful  in  the  extreme. 
Then  what?  With  a  pride  worthy  a  more  American  act, 
this  illogical  idiot  informs  us  that  "when  the  Protestants  cap- 
tured the  school-boards  of  those  cities  they  discharged  every 
one  of  the  Catholic  teachers  and  put  only  good  Protestants 
on  guard."  And  at  that  Baptist  brethren — with  water  on 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  127 

the  brain — who  boast  of  Roger  Williams,  cheered  so  loudly 
as  to  be  in  danger  of  lockjaw.  In  the  exuberant  imagina- 
tion of  Slattery  and  his  dupes  there  appears  to  be  a  wonder- 
ful difference  between  tweedledum  and  tweeclledee.  It 
doesn't  seem  to  have  occurred  to  them  that  what  is  sauce 
for  the  Protestant  goose  should  be  sauce  for  the  Catholic 
gander.  They  damn  the  Catholics  for  doing  the  very  thing 
for  which  they  commend  the  Protestant.  That's  the  logic 
of  the  A.  P.  A. — the  Aggregation  of  Pusillanimous  Asses. 
In  my  humble  opinion  both  were  engaged  in  very  small 
business.  The  only  difference  in  the  offenders  that  I  can 
see  is  that  while  the  Catholics  are  saying  nothing,  the  Pro- 
testants are  loudly  boasting  of  their  vicious  subversion  of 
the  American  principle  of  religious  liberty.  The  circum- 
stance is  a  sharp  reminder  that  if  we  are  to  preserve  a  gov- 
ernment of  the  people,  for  the  people  and  by  the  people, 
we've  got  to  keep  religion  of  all  kinds  out  of  our  politics, 
just  as  the  framers  of  the  federal  constitution  intended  that 
we  should  do.  Mixing  religion  and  politics  is  like  mixing 
whisky  and  water — it  spoils  both. 

Slattery  would  have  you  believe  that  our  Catholic  citizens 
are  simply  emissaries  of  the  Pope,  to  whom  they  owe  alle- 
giance both  spiritual  and  temporal,  and  that  they  will,  at 
the  first  opportunity,  subvert  American  institutions  and 
make  this  Nation  simply  a  satrapy  of  the  Vatican. 

The  American  Catholic  takes  his  theology  from  Rome ; 
he  takes  his  politics  from  the  ecumenical  council  of  his 
party — from  the  national  convention  of  that  partisan  organi- 
zation to  which  he  may  chance  to  belong. 

That  there  can  be  no  "Catholic  conspiracy"  against  the 
free  institutions  of  this  country  must  be  evident  to  every 
man  of  common  sense  from  the  simple  fact  that  Catholics 
are  divided  among  all  the  political  parties — are  continually 
voting  against  each  other.  Now  I  appeal  to  your  judg- 
ment— lay  aside  your  religious  prejudices  for  the  moment 
and  look  at  the  matter  from  a  non-partisan,  non-sectarian 
standpoint:  If  our  Catholic  fellow  citizens  be  under  the 
thumb  of  the  Pope  politically,  as  the  apostate  now  evange- 
lizing for  the  A.  P.  A.  would  have  us  believe;  and  if  the 
Pope  desires  to  make  himself  temporal  ruler  of  this  land,  or 
in  any  manner  direct  its  affairs,  would  they  not  be  found 
voting  as  a  unit — a  mighty  political  machine — instead  of 
being  as  badly  divided  on  secular  questions  as  the  Baptists 
themselves?  San  Antonio  is  a  Catholic  stronghold,  yet  a 
prominent  Roman  Catholic  was  overwhelmingly  defeated 
in  the  last  mayoralty  election.  And  I  could  cite  you  hun- 


128  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

dreds  of  instances  where  Catholics  have  voted  against  men 
of  their  own  religious  faith  and  elected  Protestants  or  in- 
fidels. 

Again:  If  the  Pope  is  plotting  against  America;  and  if 
all  manner  of  crime  be  considered  a  virtue  when  committed 
by  Catholics  in  furtherance  of  his  ends,  as  Slattery  would 
have  you  believe,  then  it  were  well  to  keep  a  sharp  eye  on 
apostate  priests.  How  are  we  to  know  that  they  are  not 
emissaries  of  the  Vatican,  commissioned  to  stir  the  Protest- 
ants up  to  persecute  their  brethren  in  Christ  and  thereby 
solidify  the  Catholic  vote?  No  one,  not  even  Slattery,  has 
accused  the  Pope  of  being  a  fool ;  and  certain  it  is  that  the 
A.  P.  A.  movement,  if  persisted  in,  will  have  the  effect  of 
driving  the  Catholics  of  this  country  to  political  unity  in 
self-defense.  Persecution,  political  ostracism  for  religious 
opinion's  sake,  will  infallibly  bring  about  those  very  condi- 
tions which  Slattery,  Hicks,  et  al.  declare  that  the  Pope  de- 
sires. The  communicants  of  the  Church  of  Rome  will  no 
longer  vote  as  Democrats  or  Republicans,  but  as  Catholics 
— and  then?  With  unlimited  wealth,  and  such  a  political 
machine  at  the  command  of  a  man  so  ambitious  and  unscru- 
pulous as  we  are  asked  to  believe  the  Pope  to  be,  the  cap- 
ture of  the  federal  government  and  the  political  domination 
of  this  country  were  as  easy  as  lying !  The  Protestants,  di- 
vided into  a  hundred  warring  factions,  many  of  them  far- 
ther apart  theologically  than  Episcopalianism  and  Catholic- 
ism, could  offer  no  resistance  to  such  a  political  machine, 
and  they  would  receive  but  cold  comfort  from  the  liberal 
element,  which  has  suffered  so  long  from  their  petty  perse- 
cutions. 

And  I  tell  you  Protestants  right  here,  that  if  it  be  the 
intention  of  the  Church  of  Rome  to  transform  this  govern- 
ment into  a  theocracy  by  fair  means  or  by  foul,  then  the 
Pope  is  the  real  founder  of  the  A.  P.  A.  and  Slattery's  a 
Papal  spy. 


According  to  the  story  of  this  self-constituted  protector 
of  the  American  government,  he  studied  Roman  Catholic 
theology  for  years,  then  officiated  as  a  priest  for  eight  more 
before  discovering  anything  immoral  in  the  teachings  of  the 
Mother  Church,  when  it  suddenly  occurred  to  him  that  it 
was  but  a  tissue  of  falsehoods,  a  veritable  cesspool  of  rot- 
tenness. His  transformation  appears  to  have  been  almost 
as  sudden  as  that  of  Saul  of  Tarsus — or  that  of  Judas  Iscar- 
iot.  I  have  no  objection  to  his  leaving  the  Catholic  priest- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  129 

hood — his  bishop  stopped  his  pay.  Like  the  servant  maid 
caught  pilfering,  he  "gave  notice,  with  the  missus  a  pintin' 
at  the  door."  If  Slattery  believes  that  the  Protestant 
Through  Line  runs  more  comfortable  cars  to  the  great  here- 
after, he's  welcome  to  take  his  ticket  over  that  route;  but  I 
would  have  thought  better  of  him  had  he  made  the  change 
quietly  and  refrained  from  assaulting  with  the  vindictiveness 
of  a  renegade  that  church  to  which  he  owes  his  education, 
such  as  it  is ;  had  he  treated  the  religion  of  his  mother  with 
decency  if  not  with  respect. 

I  thought  I  had  met  all  manner  of  men ;  men  hardened  in 
crime — men  destitute  of  even  a  semblance  of  shame;  but 
never  before  did  I  behold  one  with  the  hardihood  to  stand 
up  before  American  women  and  boast  that  he  had  incurred 
a  mother's  curse.  When  a  man  falls  so  low  in  the  scale 
of  human  degradation  that  his  own  mother  disowns  him  it 
were  well  to  watch  him.  When  a  creature  asks  strangers  to 
accept  him  because  his  relatives  have  rejected  him;  when, 
for  the  sake  of  gain,  he  snaps  like  a  mangy  fice  at  the  hand 
that  once  fed  him,  and  stings  like  a  poisonous  adder  the 
bosom  that  once  nurtured  him;  when,  to  promote  his  per- 
sonal ends,  he  will  use  his  best  endeavors  to  exterminate 
religious  liberty  and  precipitate  a  bloody  sectarian  war, 
I  tell  you  he  was  not  born  a  man  but  begotten  a  beast. 

From  the  very  foundation  of  this  government  the  Catho- 
lics have  been  its  firm  defenders.  Their  wisdom  and  elo- 
quence have  adorned  its  councils  from  the  signing  of  the 
Declaration  of  American  Independence  to  this  good  day, 
and  its  every  battlefield,  from  Lexington  to  the  Custer  mas- 
sacre, has  been  wet  with  Catholic  blood.  Nine  Roman 
Catholics  signed  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and  the 
Roman  Catholics  of  New  York  contributed  so  liberally  of 
their  blood  and  treasure  to  the  cause  of  the  new-born  Nation 
that  Washington  wrote  them  a  letter  praising  their  patriot- 
ism. Several  Roman  Catholics  helped  frame  the  Federal 
Constitution,  and  the  interpretation  of  that  wonderful  in- 
strument by  a  Roman  Catholic  chief-justice  to-day  consti- 
tutes the  fundamental  law  of  the  land.  Yet  Slattery  and  that 
ridiculous  organization  of  which  he  boasts  himself  a  mem- 
ber, would  have  you  believe  that  the  American  Catholics 
would,  at  a  nod  from  the  Pope,  ruthlessly  trample  under 
foot  that  flag  in  whose  defense  they  pledged  their  lives, 
their  fortunes  and  their  sacred  honor — that  they  would 
wreck  without  remorse  and  ruin  without  regret  that  Nation 
they  helped  place  on  the  map  of  the  world.  How  do  you  old 
Confederates,  who  followed  Pat  Cleburne,  relish  having  this 


130  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

blatant  tramp  defame  your  dead  commander?  Can  you 
believe,  on  the  unsupported  testimony  of  this  mendacious 
mountebank,  that  Father  Ryan's  tribute  to  the  Stars-and- 
Bars  was  rank  hypocrisy — that  the  poet-priest  was  the  polit- 
ical tool  of  a  foreign  power?  Sherman  died  a  Catholic. 
Fighting  Phil  Sheridan  was  a  Catholic.  Old  Pap  Thomas, 
"the  Rock  of  Chickamauga,"  was  a  Catholic.  The  "Bloody 
Sixty-ninth"  New  York  was  a  Catholic  regiment,  and  its 
heroism  at  the  Battle  of  Bull  Run  forms  one  of  the  brightest 
pages  in  the  military  history  of  this  nation.  Strange  it 
never  occurred  to  those  demoralized  Protestant  regiments 
which  took  refuge  behind  the  bayonets  of  the  Sixty-ninth 
that  they  were  throwing  the  Vatican  between  themselves 
and  the  Confederate  forces! 

Slattery  assures  us  that  the  number  of  Irish  Catholics  on 
the  police  force  of  our  great  cities  is  evidence  that  the 
Church  of  Rome  is  on  mischief  bent.  I  am  not  surprised 
that  an  Irish  Catholic  with  a  club  in  his  hand  should  prove 
rather  alarming  to  Bro.  Slattery.  But,  although  he  says, 
"meet  a  policeman  and  you'll  see  the  map  of  Ireland  in  his 
face,"  those  same  policemen  have  several  times  saved  his 
worthless  bacon.  When  he  was  mobbed  in  St.  Louis  for 
defaming  Catholic  nuns,  the  police  formed  a  cordon  around 
his  infamous  carcass  and  saved  him  from  a  well-merited 
trouncing  at  the  hands  of  the  slandered  women's  relatives. 
Probably  the  police  did  not  relish  the  job  overmuch,  but 
they  had  sworn  to  uphold  the  laws,  and  although  Slattery 
insists  that  a  Catholic  oath  amounts  to  nothing,  they  risked 
their  lives  in  his  defense. 

We  have  many  nationalities  in  this  country,  and  each  of 
them,  as  every  observant  man  well  knows,  manifests  a  pre- 
dilection for  some  special  occupation.  Thus  the  Jews  take 
to  trade,  the  Germans  to  agriculture,  the  Norwegians  to 
lumbering,  the  French  to  catering  and  the  Irish  to  politics. 
Make  a  Freewill  Baptist  or  a  Buddhist  of  an  Irishman  and 
you  do  not  change  his  nature — he'll  turn  up  at  the  next  po- 
litical convention  just  the  same.  And  the  man  who's  too 
good  to  take  a  hand  in  practical  politics ;  who's  too  nice  to 
mingle  with  the  horny-handed  at  the  ward  primaries ;  who's 
too  busy  to  act  as  delegate  to  the  convention — who  deliber- 
ately neglects  his  duty  as  an  American  citizen — finds  that 
Pat's  activity  has  been  rewarded  with  a  place  on  the  police 
force,  and  blames  it  all  on  the  Pope. 


It  is  not  my  province  to  defend  Roman  Catholic  theology 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  131 

—I  suppose  that  Slattery  said  all  that  could  be  urged  in  its 
behalf  before  the  apostatized.  Perhaps  the  Catholics  really 
believe  the  Pope  infallible ;  and  if  they  do,  it  is  certainly  no 
worse  than  for  certain  Waco  Protestants  to  believe  that  Slat- 
tery's  infallible.  I  noticed  that  at  his  lecture  last  week  they 
cheered  every  charge  he  preferred  against  either  the  Pope 
or  the  "Apostle,"  and  that  without  asking  for  an  iota  of 
evidence.  When  I  arose  at  the  stag  party  with  which  he 
wound  up  the  intellectual  debauch,  and  questioned  his  in- 
fallibility, the  good  brethren  cried,  "Throw  him  out !"  Why 
did  they  so  unless  they  believed  that  to  question  the  supernal 
wisdom  and  immaculate  truth  of  aught  a  Baptist  minister 
might  say,  were  sacrilege — a  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost  ? 

Here  was  I,  their  fellow  citizen  of  Waco.  I  had  done 
them  no  harm;  yet  when  a  strolling  vagabond,  wearing 
God's  livery,  and  whose  forte  is  the  defamation  of  women, 
made  a  statement,  which  if  true,  would  forever  disgrace  me 
in  the  eyes  of  the  world;  when  he  preferred  this  charge 
against  me  within  two  blocks  of  where  my  babies  lay  sleep- 
ing, they  wanted  to  mob  me  for  branding  him  then  and  there 
as  an  infamous  liar  and  a  cowardly  blackguard. 

Mark  you,  I'm  no  tramp  in  America.  This  is  the  house 
of  my  fathers.  They  helped  hew  it  out  of  the  Virginia  wil- 
derness. They  helped  put  Old  Glory  in  the  heavens,  and 
to  keep  it  there  for  more  than  a  hundred  years;  still  it  ap- 
pears that  I  have  no  rights  in  this  country  which  a  foreigner 
with  the  smell  of  the  steerage  still  upon  him  is  bound  to  re- 
spect, if  he  chances  to  be  a  Baptist  preacher. 

Talk  to  me  about  the  Church  of  Rome  muzzling  free 
speech  when  the  A.  P.  A.  would  mob  an  American  citizen 
for  defending  his  character  from  the  infamous  falsehoods 
of  a  foreign  tramp !  "Throw  him  out !"  Why  throw  him 
out  ?  I'll  tell  you :  The  sanctified  buzzards  had  gone  there 
with  appetites  sharpened  for  a  mess  of  carrion,  and  they 
were  afraid  I'd  kill  their  cook.  "Throw  him  out!"  But  I 
noticed  that  those  who  were  splitting  their  faces  as  wide  as 
Billy  Kersands'  were  glued  to  their  seats.  They  wanted 
somebody  else  to  throw  him  out.  They  were  anxious  to  see 
a  gang  of  three  or  four  hundred  sanctified  hoodlums  trample 
upon  me,  but  there  was  not  one  among  the  self-constituted 
protectors  of  this  mighty  American  Nation  with  sufficient 
"sand"  to  lead  the  mob.  If  there  were  no  better  Americans 
than  those  trailing  in  the  wake  of  the  Rev.  Joseph  Slattery, 
like  buzzards  following  a  bad  smell,  I'd  take  a  cornstalk, 
clean  out  the  whole  shooting-match  and  stock  the  country 
with  niggers  and  yaller  dogs.  If  such  cattle  were  sired  by 


132  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

Satan,  dammed  by  Sycorax  and  born  in  hell  they  would  dis- 
honor their  parents  and  disgrace  their  country. 

Slattery  insists  that  Catholics  believe  thus-and-so,  and 
that  no  man  with  such  a  faith  concealed  about  his  person 
can  be  a  good  American  citizen.  I  don't  know  about  that; 
but  I  do  know  that  if  the  Catholic,  act  in  strict  accordance 
with  their  religious  creed  they  are  the  only  people  in  this 
country  that  do  so.  I've  learned  that  you  can't  judge  a 
man  by  his  catechism.  Slattery  assures  us  that  he  has  dis- 
carded the  Pope  and  taken  Christ  for  his  immediate  guide. 
The  latter  commands  his  followers  to  pray  for  those  who 
despitefully  use  them ;  but  if  Slattery  did  any  praying  for  the 
"Apostle"  during  his  sojourn  in  this  city  he  managed  to 
keep  that  fact  a  profound  secret.  Christ  enjoins  patience 
and  humility.  He  tells  his  followers  to  turn  the  other  cheek 
to  the  smiter;  yet  Slattery  assured  the  ladies  Wednesday 
night  that  he  was  "a  great  believer  in  muscular  Christian- 
ity." Then  he  placed  his  250  pounds  of  stall-fed  beef  in 
fighting  attitude  and  declared  he'd  "like  to  have  his  enemies 
come  at  him  one  at  a  time" — to  be  prayed  for,  I  presume. 
If  Christ  taught  "muscular  Christianity"  I  have  inadvertent- 
ly overlooked  a  bet.  Christ  commands  us  to  love  our  ene- 
mies, but  doesn't  suggest  that  we  should  manifest  our  affec- 
tion by  lying  about  'em.  He  rebuked  those  who  tattled 
about  a  common  courtesan,  yet  Slattery  defamed  decent 
women.  No,  you  can't  judge  a  man  by  his  creed.  If  the 
allegiance  of  the  Catholics  to  the  Pope  is  of  the  same  charac- 
ter as  that  of  Slattery  to  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  Uncle  Sam 
need  not  lie  awake  o'  nights  to  worry  about  "Papal  plots." 

Had  Slattery  been  truly  a  Christian,  instead  of  black- 
guarding me  when  protected  by  the  presence  of  ladies,  he 
would  have  put  up  a  fervent  prayer  for  my  immediate  con- 
version to  the  Baptist  faith.  But  his  milk  of  human  kind- 
ness had  soured — he  was  short  on  Christian  charity  and  long 
on  gall. 

"Faith,  hope  and  charity,"  says  St.  Paul ;  "and  the  great- 
est of  these  is  charity."  And  he  might  have  added  that  it's 
also  the  scarcest.  Perhaps  that's  what  makes  it  so  valuable 
— the  supply  is  never  equal  to  the  demand. 

Speaking  of  .charity  reminds  me  of  my  experience  "with 
the  Protestant  preachers  of  San  Antonio,  some  of  whom,  I 
understand,  are  aiding  and  abetting  this  A.  P.  A.  movement, 
"designed  to  preserve  the  priceless  liberty  of  free  speech." 
While  editor  of  the  morning  paper  of  that  city  I  was  in  the 
habit  of  writing  a  short  sermon  for  the  Sunday  edition,  for 
the  benefit  of  those  who  could  not  go  to  church,  I  supposed 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  133 

that  the  ministers  would  sanction  my  clerical  efforts,  but 
they  didn't.  They  wanted  no  assistance  in  saving  souls, 
considered  that  they  should  be  accorded  a  monopoly  in  that 
line  and  were  entitled  to  all  the  emoluments.  They  pro- 
ceeded to  thunder  at  me  from  the  pulpit,  and  sometimes 
three  or  four  perspiring  pulpiteers  were  pounding  away  at 
me  at  the  same  time — and  incidentally  making  me  very  pop- 
ular. I  dropped  into  a  swell  church  one  Sunday  morning 
to  get  a  little  grace — a  building  that  cost  up  in  the  six  figures 
while  people  were  living  in  $4  jackals  and  subsisting  on  50 
cents  a  week  within  sound  of  its  bells — and  the  minister  was 
holding  a  copy  of  the  Express  aloft  in  one  hand  and  a  Bible 
in  the  other  and  demanding  of  his  congregation:  "Which 
"will  you  take — Brann  or  God?"  Well,  they  seemed  to  think 
that  if  they  couldn't  have  both  they'd  best  take  God,  tho' 
some  of  the  sinners  on  the  back  seats  were  a  trifle  subsequent 
in  making  up  their  minds. 

I  kept  hammering  away — preaching  to  my  little  congre- 
gation of  fifteen  or  twenty  thousand  readers  every  Sunday, 
as  I  now  do  to  ten  times  that  many  a  month — until  finally  the 
Ministerial  Association  met,  perorated,  whereased,  resoluted 
and  wound  up  by  practically  demanding  of  the  proprietor  of 
the  Express  that  I  be  either  muzzled  or  fired.  And  all  this 
time  the  Catholic  priests  said  never  a  word — and  San  An- 
tonio is  a  Catholic  city.  But  the  Baptist  ministers  were 
running  a  sneaking  boycott!  Yet  the  Church  of  Rome  is 
the  boa-constrictor  that's  trying  to  throttle  the  American 
right  of  free  speech ! 

The  Y.  M.  C.  A.  invited  me  to  lecture  on  Humbugs,  and 
that  scared  the  Ministerial  Association  nearly  to  death. 
They  thought  I  was  after  'em  now  sure,  so  they  went  to 
the  officials  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  and  made  them  cancel  the 
date.  And  the  only  Protestant  minister  in  the  entire  city 
who  did  not  join  in  this  attempt  to  throttle  free  speech 
was  an  Episcopalian — and  the  Episcopalians  are  not 
Protestants  to  hurt.  Yet  when  these  ministers,  who  are 
now  so  fearful  that  the  Church  of  Rome  will  muzzle 
somebody,  found  that  they  couldn't  drive  me  out  of  town ; 
that  they  couldn't  take  the  bread  from  the  mouths  of  my 
babes  because  I  had  dared  utter  my  honest  thoughts  like 
a  freeman;  that  I  was  to  continue  to  edit  the  Express  so 
long  as  I  liked,  they  came  fawning  about  me  like  a  lot  of 
spaniels  afraid  of  the  lash !  But  not  one  of  them  ever  tried 
to  convert  me.  Not  one  of  them  ever  tried,  by  kindly  ar- 
gument, to  convince  me  that  I  was  wrong.  N'ot  one  of 
them  ever  invited  me  to  church — or  prayed  for  me,  so  far 


134  BRANN,  THE.  ICONOCLAST 

as  I  could  learn.    Perhaps  they,  thought  I  was  past  re- 
demption. 


Slattery  cautions  you  not  to  send  your  children  to  con- 
vent schools,  declaring-  that  he  ''never  yet  saw  a  nun  who 
was  an  educational  woman."  That  statement,  standing  alone, 
ought  to  convince  every  one  blessed  with  a  thinking  ap- 
paratus that  Slattery's  a  fraud.  Some  of  the  best  edu- 
cated women  in  this  world  have  entered  convents.  Wo- 
men upon  whose  tuition  fortunes  have  been  expended  are 
now  making  convent  schools  deservedly  popular  with  the 
intelligent  people. 

He  says  ignorance  is  the  correlative  of  Catholicism,  and 
points  to  Spain  as  proof  of  this  startling  assertion.  There 
was  a  time  when  Spain  stood  in  the  very  forefront  of  civ- 
ilization, in  the  van  of  human  progress,  the  arbiter  of  the 
world's  political  destiny, — and  Spain  was  even  more 
Catholic  then  than  it  is  to-day.  Nations  and  civilizations 
have  their  youth,  their  lusty  manhood  and  their  decay, 
and  it  were  idle  to  attribute  the  decline  of  Spain  to  Catholi- 
cism as  the  decadence  of  Greece  to  Paganism.  The  Catho- 
lic church  found  Spain  a  nation  of  barbarians  and  brought 
it  up  to  that  standard  of  civilization  where  a  Spanish  mon- 
arch could  understand  the  mighty  plans  of  Columbus.  It 
was  her  Catholic  Majesty,  Queen  Isabella,  who  took  from 
her  imperial  bosom  the  jewels  with  which  to  buy  a  world 
— who  exchanged  the  pearls  of  the  Orient  for  the  star  of 
Empire.  The  Catholic  church  found  England  a  nation  of 
barbarians  and  brought  it  up,  step  by  step,  until  Catholic 
barons  wrung  from  King  John  at  Runnymede  the  Great 
Charter — the  mother  of  the  American  Constitution.  It 
found  Ireland  a  nation  of  savages  and  did  for  it  what  the 
mighty  power  of  the  Caesars  could  not — brought  it  within 
the  pale  of  civilization.  But  for  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  Slattery  might  be  wearing  a  breech  clout,  digging 
roots  with  his  finger  nails  and  gorging  himself  with  raw 
meat  in  Ireland  to-day  instead  of  insulting  the  intelli- 
gence of  American  audiences  and  wringing  money  from 
fanatics  and  fools  by  warring  upon  the  political  institu- 
tions of  their  fathers. 


Slattery  was  horrified  to  learn  that  some  of  the  nun.s 
were  inclined  to  talk  about  each  other.    I  sincerely  trust 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  135 

that  he  will  find  none  of  the  Baptist  sisters  addicted  to 
the  same  bad  habit. 

From  what  I  could  gather  of  his  discourse, — before  I 
was  "put  out" — and  from  the  report  of  his  alleged  wife's 
lectures,  I  infer  that  this  delectable  twain  impeach  the 
virtue  of  the  Roman  Catholic  sisterhoods.  Malice,  like 
death,  loves  a  shining  mark,  and  there  is  no  hate  so  veno- 
mous as  that  of  the  apostate.  But  before  giving  credence 
to  such  tales,  let  me  ask  you :  Why  should  a  woman  ex- 
change the  brilliant  parlor  for  a  gloomy  cell  in  which  to  play 
the  hypocrite?  Why  should  a  cultured  woman  of  gentle 
birth  deliberately  forego  the  joys  of  wife  and  motherhood, 
the  social  triumph  and  the  freedom  of  the  world  and  con- 
demn herself  to  a  life  of  labor,  a  dreary  round  of  drudgery, 
if  her  heart's  impure?  For  shame! 

Who  is  it  that  visits  the  slums  of  our  great  cities  min- 
istering to  the  afflicted,  comforting  the  dying,  reclaiming 
the  fallen?  When  pestilence  sweeps  over  the  land  and 
mothers  desert  their  babes  and  husbands  their  wives,  who 
is  it  that  presses  the  cup  of  cold  water  to  the  feverish  lip 
and  closes  the  staring  eyes  of  the  deserted  dead?  Who 
was  it  that  went  upon  the  Southern  battle-fields  to  min- 
ister to  the  wounded  soldiers,  followed  them  to  the  hospi- 
tals and  tenderly  nursed  them  back  to  life?  The  Roman 
Catholic  sisterhoods,  God  bless  them ! 

One  of  those  angels  of  mercy  can  walk  unattended  and 
unharmed  thro'  our  "Reservation"  at  midnight.  She  can 
visit  with  impunity  the  most  degraded  dive  in  the  White- 
chapel  district.  At  her  coming  the  ribald  song  is  stilled 
and  the  oath  dies  on  the  lips  of  the  loafer.  Fallen  crea- 
tures reverently  touch  the  hem  of  her  garments,  and  men 
steeped  in  crime  to  the  very  lips  involuntarily  remove 
their  hats  as  a  tribute  to  noble  womanhood.  The  very 
atmosphere  seems  to  grow  sweet  with  her  coming  and  the 
howl  of  hell's  demons  to  grow  silent.  None  so  low  in  the 
barrel-house,  the  gambling  hell  or  the  brothel  as  to 
breathe  a  word  against  her  good  name ;  but  when  we  turn 
to  the  Baptist  pulpit  there  we  find  an  inhuman  monster 
clad  in  God's  livery,  saying,  "Unclean,  unclean !"  God  help 
a  religious  denomination  that  will  countenance'  such  an 
infamous  cur! 

As  a  working  journalist  I  have  visited  all  manner  of 
places.  I  have  written  up  the  foulest  dives  that  exist  on 
this  continent,  and  have  seen  Sisters  of  Charity  enter 
them  unattended.  Had  one  of  the  inmates  dared  insult 
them  he  would  have  been  torn  in  pieces.  And  I  have  sat 


136  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

in  the  opera  house  of  this  city — boasting  itself  a  center  of 
culture — and  heard  a  so-called  man  of  God  speak  flip- 
pantly of  the  Catholic  sisterhoods,  and  professing  Christ- 
ians applaud  him  to  the  echo. 

Merciful  God !  if  heaven  is  filled  with  such  Christians, 
send  me  to  hell,  with  those  whose  sins  are  inhuman !  Bet- 
ter everlasting  life  in  a  lake  of  fire  than  enforced  compan- 
ionship in  Paradise  for  one  hour  with  the  foul  harpies  that 
groaned  "awmen"  to  Slattery's  infamous  utterances.  God 
of  Israel !  to  think  that  those  unmanly  scabs,  those  psalm- 
singing  vultures  are  Americans  and  our  political  brethren ! 


I  know  little  about  the  private  lives  of  the  Catholic 
priesthood;  but  this  I  do  know:  They  were  the  first  to 
plant  the  standard  of  Christian  faith  in  the  New  World. 
They  were  the  first  to  teach  the  savages  something  of  the 
blessings  of  civilization.  I  do  know  that  those  of  them 
who  were  once  Protestants  are  not  making  a  specialty  of 
defaming  the  faith  of  their  fathers.  I  do  know  that  neither 
hardship  nor  danger  can  abate  their  holy  zeal  and  that 
hundreds  of  them  have  freely  given  their  lives  in  the  serv- 
ice of  the  Lord.  And  why  should  a  man  devote  his  body 
to  God  and  his  soul  to  the  devil  ?  I  do  know  that  one  of 
them  has  given  us  the  grandest  example  of  human  sacri- 
fice for  others'  sake  that  this  great  world  affords.  Even 
Christ  prayed  in  the  Garden  of  Gethsemane,  "If  it  be  pos- 
sible, let  this  cup  pass  from  me;"  but  Father  Damien 
pressed  a  cup  even  more  bitter  to  his  own  lips  and  drained 
it  to  the  dregs — died  for  the  sake  of  suffering  mortals  a 
death  to  which  the  cross  were  mercy. 

The  Protestants  admit  that  they  are  responsible  for  the 
inoculation  of  the  simple  Sandwich  Islanders  with  the 
leprosy;  yet  when  those  who  fell  victims  to  the  foul  dis- 
ease were  segregated,  made  prisoners  upon  a  small  island 
in  the  mid- Pacific,  not  a  Protestant  preacher  in  all  the 
earth  could  be  found  to  minister  to  them.  The  Lord  had 
"called"  'em  all  into  his  vineyard,  but  it  appears  that  he 
didn't  call  a  blessed  one  of  them  to  that  leper  colony 
where  people  were  rotting  alive,  with  none  to  point  them 
to  that  life  beyond  the  grave  where  all  the  sins  and  cor- 
ruptions of  the  flesh  are  purged  away  and  the  redeemed 
stand  in  robes  of  radiant  white  at  the  rigfht  hand  of  God. 
I  blame  no  man  for  declining  the  sacrifice.  To  set  foot 
upon  that  accursed  spot  was  to  be  declared  unclean  and 
there  confined  until  death  released  you — death  by  leprosy, 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  137 

the  most  appalling  disease  in  all  the  dreadful  catalogue 
of  human  ills,  the  most  dreaded  arrow  in  the  quiver  of  the 
grim  Destroyer.  Yet  Father  Damien,  a  young  Roman 
Catholic  priest,  left  home  and  country  and  all  that  life 
holds  dear,  and  went  deliberately  forth  to  die  for  afflicted 
barbarians.  There  he  reared  an  humble  temple  with  his 
own  hands  to  the  God  of  his  fathers,  there,  thro'  long 
years  of  confinement,  he  ministered  to  the  temporal  and 
spiritual  wants  of  the  afflicted;  there  he  died,  as  he  knew 
he  must  die,  with  his  fingers  falling  from  his  hands,  his 
flesh  from  his  bones,  a  sight  to  appall  the  very  imps  of 
hell.  No  wonder  the  Protestant  ministers  held  aloof. 
Merciful  God.  I'd  rather  be  crucified! 

We  are  all  brave  men  when  the  war-drum  throbs  and 
the  trumpet  calls  us  to  do  battle  beneath  the  eyes  of  the 
world, — when,  touching  elbows  with  our  fellows  and  clad 
in  all  the  glorious  pomp  and  circumstance  of  war  we  seek 
the  bubble  of  fame  e'en  at  the  cannon's  mouth.  When  the 
music  of  the  battery  breeds  murder  in  the  blood,  the  elec- 
tric order  goes  ringing  down  the  line,  is  answered  by  the 
thrilling  cheer,  the  veriest  coward  drives  the  spur  deep 
into  the  foaming  flank  and  plunges,  like  a  thunderbolt, 
into  the  gaping  jaws  of  death,  into  the  mouth  of  hell ;  but 
when  a  man  was  wanted  to  go  forth  alone,  without  blare 
of  trumpet  or  drum,  and  become  a  life-prisoner  in  a  leper 
colony,  but  one  in  all  the  world  could  be  found  equal  to 
that  supreme  test  of  personal  heroism,  and  that  man  was 
a  Roman  Catholic  priest.  And  what  was  his  reward? 
Hear  what  Thos.  G.  Sherman,  a  good  Protestant,  says  in 
the  New  York  Post: 

"Before  the  missionaries  gained  control  of  the  islands 
leprosy  was  unknown.  But  with  the  introduction  of 
strange  races,  leprosy  established  itself  and  rapidly  in- 
creased. An  entire  island  was  properly  devoted  to  the 
lepers.  No  Protestant  missionary  would  venture  among 
them.  For  this  I  do  not  blame  them,  as,  no  doubt,  I 
should  not  have  had  the  courage  to  go  myself.  But  a 
noble  Catholic  priest  consecrated  his  life  to  the  service  of 
the  lepers,  lived  among  them,  baptized  them,  educated 
•'them,  and  brought  some  light  and  happiness  into  their 
wretched  lives.  Stung  by  the  contrast  of  his  example,  the 
one  remaining  missionary,  a  recognized  and  paid  agent  of 
the  American  Board,  spread  broadcast  the  vilest  slanders 
against  Father  Damien." 

So  it  appears  that  the  world  is  blessed  with  two  Slat- 
terys. 


138  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

There  are  three  kinds  of  liars  at  large  in  the  land :  The 
harmless  Munchhausen  who  romances  for  amusement,  and 
whose  falsehoods  do  no  harm ;  the  Machiavellian  liar,  whose 
mendacity  bears  the  stamp  of  original  genius,  and  the 
stupid  prevaricator,  who  rechews  the  fetid  vomit  of  other 
villains  simply  because  he  lacks  a  fecund  brain  to  breed 
falsehoods  to  which  he  may  play  the  father.  And  Slavery's 
a  rank  specimen  of  the  latter  class.  When  he  attempts  to 
branch  out  for  himself  he  invariably  comes  to  grief.  After 
giving  a  dreadful  account  of  how  Catholics  persecute  those 
who  renounce  the  faith,  declaring  that  they  were  a  disgrace 
to  the  church  while  within  its  pale,  he  produced  a  certificate 
from  a  Philadelphia  minister  to  the  effect  that  he — the  Phil- 
adelphian — had  visited  Slattery 's  old  parish  in  Ireland  and 
the  Catholics  there  declared  that  he  was  a  good  and  faithful 
priest !'  What  Slattery  seems  to  lack  to  become  a  first-class 
fraud  is  continuity  of  thought.  He  lies  fluently,  even  en- 
tertainingly, but  not  consistently. 

The  apostate  priest  would  have  the  various  Protestant  de- 
nominations throw  down  the  bars  that  separate  them  and 
mark  off  their  theological  bailiwicks  "with  little  beds  of 
flowers."  The  idea  is  a  good  one — and  I  can  but  wronder 
where  Slattery  stole  it.  Still  I  can  see  no  cogent  reason  for 
getting  all  the  children  together  in  happy  union  and  leaving 
their  good  old  mother  out  in  the  cold. 

Throw  down  all  the  bars,  and  let  every  division  of  the 
Great  Army  of  God,  whether  wearing  the  uniform  of  Budd- 
hist or  Baptist,  Catholic  or  Campbellite,  Methodist  or  Mo- 
hammedan, move  forward,  with  Faith  its  sword,  Hope  its 
ensign  and  Charity  its  shield.  Cease  this  foolish  interne- 
cine strife,  at  which  angels  weep,  swing  into  line  as  sworn 
allies  and,  at  the  command  of  the  Great  Captain,  advance 
your  standards  on  the  camp  of  the  common  foe.  Wage 
war,  not  upon  each  other,  but  on  Poverty,  Ignorance  and 
Crime,  hell's  great  triumvirate,  until  this  beautiful  world's 
redeemed  and  bound  in  very  truth, 

"With  gold  chains  about  the  feet  of  God." 


TRILBY  AND  THE  TRILBYITES. 


The  Trilby  craze  has  overrun  the  land  like  the  ''grip" 
bacillus  or  the  seven-year  locust.  Here  in  America  it  has 
become  almost  as  disgusting  as  the  plague  of  lice  sent  upon 
Egypt  to  eat  the  chilled  steel  veneering  off  the  heart  of 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  139 

Pharaoh  the  fickle.  Everything  is  Trilby.  We  have  Tril- 
by bonnets  and  bonbons,  poses  and  plays,  dresses  and 
drinks.  Trilby  sermons  have  been  preached  from  promi- 
nent pulpits,  and  the  periodicals,  from  penny-post  to  preten- 
tious magazine,  have  Trilbyismus  and  have  it  bad.  One 
\vould  think  that  the  world  had  just  found  Salvation,  so 
loud  and  unctious  is  its  hosannah — that  Trilby  was  some  new 
Caaba-stone  or  greater  Palladium  floated  down  from  heaven 
on  the  wings  of  Du  Maurier's  transcendant  genius;  that 
after  waiting  and  watching  for  six  thousand — or  million — 
years,  a  perfect  exemplar  had  been  bequeathed  to  the 
world. 

I  have  read  Du  Maurier's  foolish  little  book — as  a  disa- 
greeable duty.  The  lot  of  the  critic  is  an  unenviable  one. 
He  must  read  everything,  even  such  insufferable  rot  as 
"Coin's  Financial  School,"  and  those  literary  nightmares 
turned  loose  in  rejoinder — veritable  Rozinantes,  each  bear- 
ing a  chop-logic  Don  Quixote  with  pasteboard  helmet  and 
windmill  spear.  I  knew  by  the  press  comments — I  had  al- 
ready surmised  from  its  popularity  with  upper-tendom — that 
"Trilby"  was  simply  a  highly  spiced  story  of  female  frailty ; 
hence  I  approached  it  with  "long  teeth" — like  a  politician 
eating  crow,  or  a  country  boy  absorbing  his  first  glass  of 
lager  beer.  I  had  received  a  surfeit  of  the  Camillean  style 
of  literature  in  my  youth,  before  I  learned  with  Ecclesiastes 
the  Preacher — or  even  with  Parkhurst — that  "all  is  vanity." 

So  far  as  my  experience  goes  the  only  story  of  a  fallen 
woman  that  was  worth  the  writing — and  the  reading — is  that 
of  Mary  Magdalen ;  and  it  is  not  French.  Her  affaires 
d'  amour  appear  to  have  ended  with  her  repentance.  She  did 
not  try  to  marry  a  duke,  elevate  the  stage  or  break  into 
swell  society.  After  closing  her  maison  de  joie  she  ceased 
to  be  "bonne  camarade  ct  bonne  fille"  in  the  tough  de  tough 
quarter  of  the  Judean  metropolis.  There  were  no  more 
strolls  on  the  Battery  by  moonlight  alone  love  after  exchang- 
ing her  silken  robe  de  chambre  for  an  old-fashioned  night- 
gown with  never  a  ruffle.  When  she  applied  the  soft  pedal 
the  Bacchic  revel  became  a  silent  prayer.  So  far  as  we  can 
gather,  the  cultured  gentlemen  of  Judea  did  not  fall  over 
each  other  in  a  frantic  effort  to  ensnare  her  with  Hymen's 
noose.  If  the  Apostles  recommended  her  life  to  the  ladies 
of  their  congregations  as  worthy  emulation  the  stenograph- 
ers must  have  been  nodding  worse  than  Homer.  If  the 
elite  of  Jerusalem  named  their  daughters  for  her  and  made 
her  the  subject  of  public  discussion,  that  fact  has  been  for- 
gotten. And  yet  it  is  reasonably  certain  that  she  was  beau- 


140  .       BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

tiful — even  more  beautiful  than  Trilby,  the  bones  of  whose 
face  were  so  attractive,  the  pink  of  whose  tootsie- wootsies  so 
irresistible.  The  Magdalen  of  St.  Luke  appears  to  have 
been  in  many  respects  the  superior  of  the  Magdalen  of  Du 
Maurier.  She  does  not  appear  to  have  been  an  ignorant 
and  coarse-grained  she-gamin  who  frequented  the  students' 
quarter  of  the  sacred  city,  posing  to  strolling  artists  for  "the 
altogether,"  being,  in  the  crowded  atelier  like  Mother  Eve 
in  Eden,  "naked  and  not  ashamed."  We  may  suppose  that 
the  sensuous  blood  of  the  Orient  ran  riot  in  her  veins — that 
she  was  swept  into  the  fierce  maelstrom  by  love  and  passion 
and  would  have' perished  there  but  for  the  infinite  pity  of  our 
Lord,  who  cast  out  the  seven  devils  that  lurked  within  her 
heart  like  harpies  in  a  Grecian  temple,  and  stilled  the  storm 
that  beat  like  sulphurous  waves  of  fire  "within  her  snowy 
breast. 

"And  behold,  a  woman  in  the  city,  which  was  a  sinner, 
when  she  knew  that  Jesus  sat  at  meat  in  the  Pharisee's 
house,  brought  an  alabaster  box  of  ointment,  and  stood  at 
his  feet  behind  him  weeping,  and  began  to  wash  his  feet 
with  tears,  and  did  wipe  them  with  the  hairs  of  her  head, 
and  kissed  his  feet  and  anointed  them  with  ointment." 

How  stale,  flat  and  unprofitable  the  modern  stories  of 
semi-repentant  prostitutes  beside  that  pathetic  passage, 
which  shears  down  into  the  very  soul — penetrates  to  the 
profoundest  depths  of  the  sacred  Lake  of  Tears!  And  yet 
this  ultra  orthodox  age — which  would  suppress  the  Icono- 
clast if  it  could  for  poking  fun  at  Poll  Parrot  preachers — has 
not  become  crazed  over  Mary  Magdalen — has  not  so  much 
as  named  canal-boat  or  a  cocktail  for  her. 

Du  Maurier  says  of  his  heroine :  "With  her  it  was  lightly 
come  and  lightly  go  and  never  come  back  again.  *  *  * 
*  Sheer  gaiety  of  heart  and  genial  good  fellowship,  the 
difficulty  of  saying  nay  to  earnest  pleading  *  *  *  so  little 
did  she  know  of  love's  heartaches  and  raptures  and  torments 
and  clingings  and  jealousies,"  etc.  A  woman,  who  had 
never  been  in  love,  yet  confessed  to  criminal  intimacy  with 
three  men — and  was  not  yet  at  the  end  of  her  string!  Not 
even  the  pride  of  dress,  the  scourge  of  need,  the  fire-whips 
of  passion  to  urge  her  on,  she  sinned,  as  the  Yankees  would 
say,  simply  "to  be  a-doin'  " — broke  the  Seventh  Command- 
ment "more  in  a  f  rolicksome  spirit  of  camaraderie  than  any- 
thing else."  That's  the  way  we  used  to  kill  people  in  Texas. 
Still  I  opine  that  when  a  young  woman  gets  so  awfully  jolly 
that  she  distributes  her  favors  around  promiscuously  just  to 
put  people  in  a  good  humor,  she's  a  shaky  piece  of  furniture 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  141 

to  make  a  fad  of — a  doubtful  example  to  be  commended 
from  the  pulpit  to  America's  young-  daughters.  The  French 
enthusiasts  once  crowned  a  courtesan  in  Notre  Dame  as 
Goddess  of  Reason  and  worshipped  her;  but  I  was  hardly 
prepared  to  see  the  American  people  enthrone  another  as 
Goddess  of  Respectability  and  become  hysterical  in  their  de- 
votion. I  am  no  he-prude.  I  have  probably  said  as  many 
kindly  things  of  fallen  humanity  as  Du  Maurier  himself,  but 
I  dislike  to  see  a  rotten  drab  deified.  I  dislike  to  see  a 
great  publishing  house  like  that  of  Harper  &  Bros,  so  indif- 
ferent to  decency,  so  careless  of  moral  consequences,  that, 
for  the  sake  of  gain,  it  will  turn  loose  upon  this  land  the  foul 
liaisons  of  the  French  capital.  I  dislike  to  see  the  mothers 
of  the  next  generation  of  Americans  trying  to  "make  up"  to 
resemble  the  counterfeit  presentment  of  a  brazen  bawd.  It 
indicates  that  our  entire  social  system  is  sadly  in  need  of  fu- 
migation— such  as  Sodom  and  Gomorrah  received. 

Trilby,  the  child  of  a  bummy  preacher  and  a  bastard 
bar-maid,  was  born  and  bred  in  the  slum  of  the  wickedest 
city  in  the  world.  Little  was  to  be  expected  of  such  birth 
and  breeding.  We  are  not  surprised  that  she  regards  forni- 
cation as  but  a  venial  fault — like  cigarette  smoking — and 
sins  "capriciously,  desultorily,  more  in  a  frolicksome  spirit 
of  camaraderie  than  anything  else."  Girls  so  reared  are  apt 
to  be  a  trifle  frolicksome.  We  are  not  shocked  to  see  her 
stripped  stark  naked  in  Carrel's  atelier  in  the  presence  of 
half  a  hundred  hoodlums  of  the  Latin  quarter — seeming  as 
unconcerned  as  a  society  belle  at  opera  or  ball  with  half  her 
back  exposed,  her  bust  ready  to  spill  itself  out  of  her  corsage 
if  she  chance  to  stoop.  We  even  feel  that  it  is  in  perfect  ac- 
cord with  the  eternal  fitness  of  things  when  these  wild 
sprouts  of  Bohemia,  "with  kindly  solicitude,  help  her  on  with 
her  clothes."  We  can  even  pause  to  admire  the  experienced 
skill  with  which  they  put  each  garment  in  its  proper  place — 
nnd  deftly  button  it.'  That  she  should  have  the  ribald  slang 
of  the  free-and-easy  neighborhood  at  her  tongue's  end  and 
be  destitute  of  delicacy  as  a  young  cow  might  be  expected ; 
but  we  are  hardly  prepared  to  see  one  grown  up  among  such 
surroundings  so  unutterably  stupid  as  not  to  know  when 
her  companions  are  "guying"  her.  Trilby  croaking  "Ben 
Bolt"  for  the  edification  of  les  trois  Angliches  were  a  sight 
worthy  of  a  lunatic  asylum.  It  was  even  more  ridiculous 
than  the  social  performance  of  that  other  half-wit,  Little 
Billee,  in  Carrel's  atelier.  Stupidity  covers  even  more  sins 
than  charity,  hence  we  should  not  judge  Du  Maurier's 
heroine  too  harshly.  As  weak  intellects  yield  readily  to 


142  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

hypnotic  power,  Svengali  had  an  easy  victim.  I  have  no 
word  of  criticism  for  the  poor  creature.  I  do  not  blame  Du 
Maurier  for  drawing  her  as  he  found — or  imagined — her, 
nor  can  I  blame  popular  preachers,  "able  editors"  and  half- 
wit women  for  worshiping  the  freckled  and  faulty  grisette 
as  a  goddess ;  for  does  not  Carlyle  truly  tell  us  that  "what  we 
see,  and  cannot  see  over,  is  good  as  Infinity?"  Still  I  can- 
not entertain  an  exalted  opinion  of  either  the  intelligence 
or  morals  of  a  people  who  will  place  such  a  character  on  a 
pedestal  and  prostrate  themselves  before  it. 

I  confess  my  surprise  at  the  phenomenal  popularity  of  the 
book  among  people  familiar  with  Dickens,  Scott  and  Thack- 
erary,  triune  transcendent  of  fiction.  I  had  hoped  when 
"Ben  Hur"  made  its  great  hit  that  the  golden  age  of  flash 
fiction  was  past — that  it  could  henceforth  count  among  its 
patrons  only  stable  boys  and  scullions ;  but  the  same  nation 
that  received  "Ben  Hur"  with  tears  of  thankfulness — thank- 
fulness of  a  priceless  jewel  of  spotless  purity  ablaze  with  the 
immortal  fire  of  genius — has  gone  mad  with  joy  over  a  dirty 
rale  of  bawdry  that  might  have  been  better  told  by  a  cheap 
reporter  bordering  on  the  jimjams.  Has  the  American  na- 
tion suddenly  declined  into  intellectual  dotage — reached  the 
bald-head  and  dizzy  soubrette  finale  in  the  mighty  drama  of 
life? 

I  can  account  for  the  success  of  Du  Manner's  book  only 
on  the  hypothesis  that  "like  takes  to  like" — that  the  world 
is  full  of  frail  Trilbys  and  half-baked  duffers  like  Little 
Billee,  who,  Narcissus-like,  worship  their  own  image.  They 
don't  mind  the  contradictions  and  absurdities  with  which 
the  book  abounds ;  in  fact,  those  who  read  up-to-date  French 
novels  are  seldom  gifted  with  sufficient  continuity  of  thought 
to  detect  contradictions  if  they  appear  two  pages  apart. 
The  book  is  ultra-bizarre,  a  thin  intellectual  soup  served  in 
grotesque,  even  impossible  dishes  and  highly  flavored  with 
vulgar  animalism — just  the  mental  pabulum  craved  by  those 
whose  culture  is  artificial,  mentality  weak,  and  morals  mere 
matter  of  form.  The  plot  was  evidently  loaded  to  scatter. 
It  is  about  as  probable  as  Jack  and  the  Beanstalk,  and  is 
worked  out  with  the  skill  of  a  country  editor  trying  to  "cov- 
er" a  national  convention.  The  story  affords  about  as  much 
food  for  thought  as  one  of  Talmage's  plate-matter  sermons 
— is  fully  as  "fillin'  "  as  drinking  the  froth  out  of  a  pop-bot- 
tle, and  equally  as  exhilarating.  Like  other  sots,  the  more 
the  literary  bacchanal  drinks  the  more  he  thirsts — appetite 
increased  by  what  it  feeds  upon.  We  can  forgive  Byron 
and  Boccaccio  the  lax  morals  of  their  productions  because 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  143 

of  their  literary  excellence,  just  as  we  wink  at  the  little  social 
lapses  of  Sarah  Bernhardt  because  of  her  unapproachable 
genius ;  but  Du  Maurier's  book  is  wholly  bad.  It  could 
only  have  been  made  worse  by  being  made  bigger.  It  is  a 
moral  crime,  a  literary  abortion.  The  style  is  faulty  and  the 
narrative  marred — if  a  bad  egg  can  be  spoiled — by  slang 
lugged  in  from  the  slums  of  two  continents  with  evident 
labor.  Employed  naturally,  slang  may  serve — in  a  pinch — 
for  Attic  salt ;  but  slang  for  its  own  sake  is  smut  on  the  nose 
instead  of  a  "beauty-spot"  on  the  cheek  of  Venus — sure  evi- 
dence of  a  paucity  of  ideas.  A  trite  proverb,  a  non-transla- 
table phrase  from  a  foreign  tongue  may  be  permissible ;  but 
the  writer  who  jumbles  two  languages  together  indiscrimi- 
nately is  but  a  pedantic  prig.  It  were  bad  enough  if  Du 
Maurier  mixed  good  English  with  better  French ;  but  he  em- 
ploys in  his  bilingual  book  the  very  worst  of  both — obsolete 
American  provincialisms  and  the  patois  of  the  quartier  latin 
side  by  side.  To  the  cultured  American  who  knows  only 
the  English  of  Lindley  Murray  and  scholastic  French,  the 
book  is  about  as  intelligible  as  Greek  to  Casca  or  the  "dog- 
latin"  of  the  American  school-boy  to  Julius  Caesar. 

His  characters  resemble  the  distorted  freaks  of  nature  in 
a  dime  museum.  They  may  all  be  possible,  but  not  one  of 
them  probable.  Taffy  and  Gecko  are  the  best  of  the  lot. 
The  first  is  a  big,  good-natured  Englishman  who  wants  to 
see  his  sweetheart  married  to  his  friend,  weds  another  and 
supports  her  quite  handsomely  by  painting  pictures  he  can- 
not sell ;  the  latter  a  Pole  with  an  Italian's  temperament,  yet 
who  sees  the  woman  he  loves  in  the  power  of  a  demon — by 
whom  she  is  presumably  debauched — and  makes  no  effort 
to  rescue  her,  is  not  even  jealous.  Svengali  is  the  greatest 
musician  in  the  world,  yet  cannot  make  a  living  in  Paris,  the 
modern  home  of  art.  He  is  altogether  and  irretrievably 
bad — despite  the  harmony  in  which  his  soul  is  steeped! 
Think  of  a  hawk  outwarbling  a  nightingale — of  a  demon 
flooding  the  world  with  melody  most  divine !  We  may  now 
expect  Mephistopheles  to  warble  "Nearer  My  God  to  Thee" 
between  the  acts!  Trilby  can  sing  no  more  than  a  burro. 
Like  the  useful  animal,  she  has  plenty  of  voice,  and,  like  him, 
she  can  knock  the  horns  off  the  moon  with  it  or  send  it  on  a 
hot  chase  after  the  receding  ghost  of  Hamlet's  sire ;  but  she 
is  "tone-deaf" — can't  tell  Ophelia's  plaint  from  the  perform- 
ance of  Thomas'  orchestra.  Svengali  hypnotizes  her,  and, 
beneath  his  magic  spell  she  becomes  the  greatest  cantatrice 
in  Europe.  Hypnotism  is  a  power  but  little  understood; 
so  we  must  permit  Du  Maurier  to  make  such  Jules  Verne's 


144  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

excursions  into  that  unknown  realm  as  may  please  him. 
Had  Svengali  made  a  contortionist  of  the  stiff  old  Devon- 
shire vicar  we  could  not  cry  "impossible."  The  Laird  of 
Cockpen  is  a  good-natured  fellow  to  whom  Trilby  tells  her 
troubles  instead  of  pouring  them  into  the  capacious  ear  of  a 
policeman.  He  is  a  kind  of  bewhiskered  Sir  Galahad  who 
goes  in  quest  of  Trilby  instead  of  the  Holy  Grail,  and  hav- 
ing found  her,  sits  down  on  her  bed  and  cheers  her  up  while 
she  kisses  and  caresses  him.  As  she  is  in  love  with  his 
friend,  the  performance  is  eminently  proper,  quite  platonic. 
The  Laird  advises  Trilby  to  give  up  sitting  for  "the  altogeth- 
er;" yet  Du  Maurier  assures  us  that  "nothing  is  so  chaste 
as  nudity" — that  "Venus  herself,  as  she  drops  her  garments 
and  steps  on  to  the  model-throne,  leaves  behind  her  on  the 
floor  every  weapon  by  which  she  can  pierce  to  the  grosser 
passions  of  men." 

Then  he  informs  us  that  a  naked  "woman  is  such  a  fright 
"that  Don  Juan  himself  were  fain  to  hide  his  eyes  in  sorrow 
and  disenchantment  and  fly  to  other  climes."  How  thank- 
ful Cupid  must  be  that  he  was  born  blind !  Still  the  most  of 
us  are  willing  to  risk  one  eye  on  the  average  "altogether" 
model.  Du  Maurier — who  is  a  somewhat  better  artist  than 
author — illustrates  his  own  book.  He  gives  us  several  por- 
traits of  Trilby,  all  open-mouthed,  with  a  vacant  stare. 
Strange  that  he  did  not  draw  his  heroine  nude  as  she  sat  on 
the  bed  hugging  and  kissing  the  Laird — that  he  did  not 
hang  up  "on  the  floor  every  weapon"  by  which  even  Venus 
herself  "can  pierce  to  the  grosser  passions  of  men."  But 
perchance  he  was  afraid  the  Laird  would  "hide  his  eyes  in 
sorrow  and  disenchantment  and  fly  to  other  climes."  He 
could  not  be  spared  just  yet.  Despite  his  plea  for  the  nude, 
I  think  he  exercised  excellent  judgment  in  leaving  Trilby 
"clothed  and  in  her  right  mind" — such  as  it  was — while  the 
Laird  roosted  on  her  couch  in  that  attic  bed-room  and  was 
—to  use  a  Tennysonianism — mouthed  an-d  mumbled.  Even 
New  York's  "400"  might  have  felt  a  little  squeamish  at  see- 
ing this  pair  of  platonic  turtle  doves  hid  away  in  an  obscure 
corner  of  naughty  Paris  in  puris  naturalibus — even  if  "there 
is  nothing  so  chaste  as  nudity." 

Du  Maurier  says  that  Trilby  never  sat  to  him  for  "the  al- 
together," and  adds :  "I  would  as  soon  have  asked  the 
Queen  of  Spain  to  let  me  paint  her  legs."  If  nudity  be  so 
chaste,  and  Trilby  didn't  mind  the  exposure  even  a  little  bit, 
why  should  he  hesitate?  And  why  should  he  not  paint  the 
legs  of  the  Queen  of  Spain — or  even  the  underpinning  of  the 
Queen  of  Hawaii — as  well  as  her  arms  ?  But  if  we  pause  to 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  145 

point  out  all  the  absurd  contradictions  in  this  flake  of  ultra- 
French  froth  we  shall  wear  out  more  than  one  pencil. 

Little  Billee  is  a  very  nice  young  man  who  has  been  kept 
too  close  to  his  mother's  apron-strings  for  his  own  good — a 
girlish,  hysterical  kind  of  boy,  who  should  be  given  spoon- 
victuals  and  put  to  bed  early.  Of  course  he  wants  to  marry 
Trilby,  fcr  he  is  of  that  age  when  -the  swish  of  a  petticoat 
makes  us  sea-sick.  She  is  perfectly  willing  to  become  his 
mistress — although  she  had  "repented1'  of  her  sins  and  been 
"forgiven"  but  a  few  days  before.  She  has  sense  enough — 
despite  Du  Manner's  portraits  of  her — to  know  that  she  is 
unworthy  to  become  a  gentleman's  wife,  to  be  mated  with  a 
he-virgin  like  Little  Billee.  But  she  is  over-persuaded— 
as  usual — and  consents.  Then  the  young  calf's  mother 
comes  on  the  scene  and  asks  her  to  spare  her  little  pansy 
blossom — not  to  blight  his  life  with  the  frost  of  her  follies. 
And  of  course  she  consents  again.  She's  the  great  con- 
senter — always  in  the  hands  of  friends,  like  an  American  pol- 
itician. "The  difficulty  of  saying  nay  to  earnest  pleading" 
prevents  a  mesalliance.  Trilby  skips  the  trala  and  Little 
Billee — who  has  no  chance  to  secure  a  reconsideration  cries 
himself  sick,  but  recovers, — comes  up  smiling  like  a  cotton- 
patch  after  a  spring  shower.  He  is  taken  to  England,  but 
fails  to  find  that  "absence  makes  the  heart  grow  fonder." 
He  gets  wedded  to  his  art  quite  prettily,  and  even  thinks 
of  turning  Mormon  and  taking  the  vicar's  daughter  for  a 
second  bride,  but  slips  up  on  an  atheistical  orange  peel, 
something  has  gone  wrong  with  his  head.  Where  his  bump 
of  amativeness  should  stick  out  like  a  walnut  there  is  a  dis- 
couraging depression  which  alarms  him  greatly,  and  "worries 
the  reader  not  a  little.  But  finally  he  sees  Trilby  again,  and, 
the  wheel  in  his  head,  which  has  stuck  fast  for  five  years, 
begins  to  whizz  around  like  the  internal  economy  of  an 
alarm  clock — or  a  sky  terrier  with  a  clothes-pin  on  his  tail. 

Of  course  there  is  now  nothing  for  Trilby  to  do  but  to 
die.  They  could  be  paired  off  in  a  kind  of  morganatic  mar- 
riage ;  but  it  is  customary  in  novels  where  the  heroine  has 
been  too  frolicsome,  for  her  to  get  comfortably  buried 
instead  of  happily  married, — and  perhaps  it  is  just  as  well. 
Even  a  French  novelist  must  make  some  little  mock  con- 
cession to  the  orthodox  belief  that  the  wage  of  sin  is 
death.  So  Trilby  sinks  into  the  grave  with  a  song  like  the 
dying  swan,  and  Little  Billee  follows  suit — upsets  the 
entire  Christian  religion  by  dying  very  peaceably  as  an 
atheist,  without  so  much  as  a  shudder  on  the  brink  of  that 
outer  darkness  where  there's  supposed  to  be  weeping  and 


146  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

wailing  and  gnashing  of  teeth.  Svengali  has  also  fallen 
by  the  wayside,  a  number  of  characters  have  been  very 
happily  forgotten,  so  the  story  drags  along  to  the  close 
on  three  not  very  attractive  legs,  Taffy,  the  Laird  and 
Gecko.  It  is  a  bad  drama  worse  staged,  with  an  ignorant 
bawd  for  heroine,  a  weak  little  thing  for  leading  man,  an 
impossible  Caliban  for  heavy  villain  and  atheism  for 
moral.  Such  is  the  wonderful  work  that  has  given  this  al- 
leged land  of  intelligence  a  case  of  literary  mania  a  potu, 
set  it  to  singing  the  praises  of  a  grimy  grisette  more  me- 
lodiously than  she  warbled,  "mironton,  mirontaine"  at 
the  bidding  of  the  villainous  Svengali.  Such  is  this  new 
lion  of  literature  who  has  set  American  maids  and'  ma- 
trons to  paddling  about  home  barefoot  and  posing  in  pub- 
lic with  open  mouths — flattering  themselves  that  they  re- 
semble a  female  whom  they  would  scald  if  she  ventured 
into  their  back  yard. 


THE  AMERICAN  DRUMMER. 
THE  APOSTLE  OF  CIVILIZATION. 

The  "Drummer"  is  distinctively  an  American  institu- 
tion. If  we  did  not  invent  we  developed  him.  He  is  not 
unknown  to  other  lands,  but  the  practice  of  "drumming 
trade"  has  been  brought  to  the  highest  perfection  in  this 
hustling,  pushing  Republic  of  the  West.  The  American 
merchant,  like  Mahomet,  will  go  to  the  mountain  if  the 
altitudinous  realty  declines  to  skate  over  to  him.  Instead 
of  bestriding  a  gum  stump,  like  Patience  on  a  monument, 
and  waiting  for  some  accommodating  cow  to  back  up  to 
the  milk-pail,  he  sends  his  agents  out  to  round  up  the  pro- 
crastinating bovine.  He  agrees  with  the  poet  that  "all 
things  come  to  him  who  waits" — including  unpaid  bills 
and  bankruptcy.  The  day  has  gone  by  when  it  were  pos- 
sible to  build  up  a  profitable  business  without  hard  and 
persistent  hustling — and  that's  what  the  Drummer  is  here 
for. 

But  he  is  more  than  an  important  trade  factor ;  he  is  an 
apostle  of  civilization,  nay,  of  religion  itself —  the  religion 
of  humanity.  He  penetrates  every  city,  town  and  hamlet, 
bringing  the  people  of  the  various  sections  of  our  com- 
mon country  into  closer  fellowship,  making  stupid  provin- 
cialism impossible.  He  has  wiped  out  Mason  and  Dixon's 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  147 

line,  and  had  he  been  so  progressive  and  powerful  a  cen- 
tury ago,  would  have  prevented  the  growth  of  that  sec- 
tional bitterness  which  culminated  in  blood.  He  is  a  pub- 
lic educator,  a  disseminator  of  new  ideas,  an  inculcator  of 
tolerance  for  the  opinion  of  others,  which,  with  the  fear  of 
God,  is  "the  beginning  of  wisdom."  He  binds  the  people 
of  the  North  and  the  South,  the  East  and  the  West,  to- 
gether with  the  golden  chains  of  commerce,  of  mutual  in- 
terest, which  are  stronger  than  sentiment,  paramount 
even  to  patriotism.  He  carries  into  the  country  the  polish 
of  the  city,  into  the  city  the  vigor  of  the  country.  With 
all  due  respect  to  the  "cloth,"  I  believe  that  we  could  bet- 
ter spare  the  D.  D's  for  a  thousand  years  than  the  Drum- 
mers for  one  day.  The  labor  of  the  first  has  a  tendency 
to  produce  faction,  that  of  the  latter  to  bring  the  entire 
people  into  a  common  brotherhood.  If  the  books  were  bal- 
anced it  would  perhaps  be  found  that  every  copper  cent 
contributed  by  the  ministers  of  America  to  feed  the  or- 
phan and  shelter  the  widow  has  been  covered  by  the 
Drummers  with  a  silver  dollar.  While  the  preacher  has 
prayed  the  commercial  pilgrim  has  worked — and  "faith 
without  works  is  dead." 

To  catalogue  the  noble  deeds  of  the  American  Drum- 
mers would  require  a  volume  larger  than  Webster's  Un- 
abridged or  the  Bible.  Their  purses  have  ever  been  open 
to  the  needy, — they  are  the  knights-errant  of  the  new 
civilization,  ever  ready  to  succor  the  distressed,  to  shelter 
the  weak  and  uplift  the  fallen.  Nearly  a  score  of  them 
have  laid  down  their  lives  for  others, — not  for  relatives  or 
friends,  but  for  men  whose  hands  they  had  never  pressed, 
for  children  whose  lips  they  had  never  touched,  for  wo- 
men whose  names  they  did  not  know.  No  cenotaph  rises 
to  commemorate  their  sacrifice,  no  flowers  are  strewn  by 
a  grateful  nation  upon  their  graves.  No  orator  with  lips 
of  gold  commends  their  heroism,  no  poet  with  heart  of  fire 
trills  forth  their  praise — the  muse  of  history  passes  in  si- 
lence the  lowly  mounds  where  reposes  the  dust  of  men 
whose  names  should  be  immortal. 

It  is  a  popular  superstition  that  the  life  of  the  Drum- 
mer is  one  dizzy  round  of  pleasure — that  his  time  is  about 
equaly  divided  between  paying  attention  to  charming 
young  ladies  met  on  the  train  and  picking  his  teeth  in 
front  of  swell  hotels,  drawing  on  his  house  and  being  en- 
tertained by  progressive  merchants  who  are  delighted  to 
see  him,  and  who  give  him  carte  blanche  to  stock  'em  up. 
I  dislike  to  bring  the  Drummer  down  from  that  ecstatic 


148  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

empyrean  where  public  opinion  has  placed  him ;  but 
really,  the  road  angel's  wings  were  not  intended  for 
Icarian  flights.  Should  he  go  sailing  "up  among  the  little 
stars,  all  around  the  moon,"  he'd  soon  get  a  note  from  the 
head  of  his  house  intimating  that  he  might  as  well  fly 
across  the  ocean,  birdie.  He  is  expected  to  keep  very  close 
to  the  grass,  but  to  avoid  its  growing  under  his  feet.  Will 
Carleton's  catalogue  of  the  qualities  necessary  to  make  a 
competent  editor  aptly  summarizes  those  of  a  successful 
Drummer. 

"Is  your  son  an  unbound  edition  of  Moses  and  Solomon  both? 

Can  he  compass  his  spirit  with  meekness  and  strangle  a  natural  oath? 

Can   he   courteously  talk   to   an   equal   and  browbeat   an   impudent 

dunce  ? 

Can  he  keep  things  in  apple-pie  order  and  do  half  a  dozen  at  once? 
Does  he  know  how  to  spur  up  his  virtue  and  put  a  check-rein  on 

his  pride? 
Can  he  carry  a  gentleman's  manners  within  a  rhinoceros'  hide?" 

The  prospective  purchaser  who's  the  pink  of  politeness 
cannot  pay  his  bills,  while  the  cash  customer's  a  veritable 
porcupine  who  must  be  approached  by  siege  and  parallel. 
The  railway  sandwich  and  gutta-percha  pie  smite  him  by 
day,  while  the  pestilence  that  walketh  in  darkness  crawls 
out  of  its  lair  and  besieges  him  by  night.  One  day  he 
fares  as  sumptuously  as  Dives  ever  did,  and  he  next  dines 
on  bull  beef,  stale  bread  and  Pefferian  butter,  then  biv- 
ouacs in  a  stuffy  room,  furnished  with  a  three-legged 
chair  and  mouldy  bed  that  smells  like  a  second-hand  coffin 
from  a  nigger  cemetery.  One  day  he  is  cared  for  like  a  king 
and  charged  two  dollars,  the  next  he  is  required  to  cough 
up  three-cart  wheels  for  being  treated  as  an  intruder 
and  fed  like  a  tramp.  The  servants  in  one  hotel  are  paid 
by  the  proprietor,  required  to  show  guests  every  possible 
attention  and  told  to  use  their  Trilbys  if  caught  angling 
for  a  tip ;  in  the  next  they  are  mere  slot-machines  into 
which  the  Drummer  is  expected  to  drop  four-bits  to  get  a 
second-class  dinner  for  which  he's  afterwards  required  to 
pay  a  dollar.  Just  about  the  time  he  gets  his  stomach 
educated  to  accept  anything-  without  a  protest,  and  has 
become  able  to  sleep  on  a  corn-cob  mattress  without  get- 
ting kicked  out  of  his  pajamas  by  a  prowling  nightmare, 
he  falls  in  love  with  some  sweet-faced  girl,  and  the 
thought  that  he  can  visit  her  but  once  in  90  days,  while 
his  rival's  fluttering  about  her  four  times  a  week,  makes 
his  heart  as  heavy  as  his  sample-case  at  the  subsequent 
end  of  a  summer's  day.  Finally  he  is  wedded  and  at  once 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  149 

begins  to  look  forward  to  the  time  when  he  can  leave  the 
road  and  enjoy  the  shade  of  his  own  vine  and  fig  tree — 
where  he  can  hear  the  whistle  of  a  train  at  2  o'clock  in  the 
morning  without  instinctively  reaching  for  his  clothes; 
but  he  now  has  a  valuable  trade  established,  which  as  a 
man  of  family  he  cannot  afford  to  sacrifice.  So  he  kisses 
the  semi-widowed  wife  and  the  babes  who  regard  him 
almost  as  an  alien,  and  goes  plodding  over  the  old  route, 
ever  longing  for  the  day  of  his  emancipation,  which  too 
often  comes  only  with  a  summons  to  exhibit  his  samples 
to  St.  Peter. 


Comparatively  few  Drummers  are  to  be  found  in  Amer- 
ican prisons,  which  proves  that  even  the  semi-homeless 
life  they  lead  has  not  demoralized  them,  as  it  would  the 
majority  of  men.  In  fact,  were  they  not  men  of  sterling 
honesty,  brains  and  culture  they  could  not  retain  their 
present  responsible  positions.  I  think  it  will  be  conceded 
by  all  careful  students  of  sociology  that  the  intelligence  of 
the  commercial  travelers,  as  a  class,  is  higher  than  the 
average  in  any  other  occupation.  This  is  not  the  result  of 
accident;  it  is  the  natural  effect  of  a  well-defined  cause. 
There  was  a  time — and  especially  here  in  the  South — 
when  the  tendency  of  the  best  intelligence  was  to  the  pro- 
fessions and  politics.  The  class  spirit  inherited  from  Eu- 
ropean ancestors  was  still  strong  within  us,  and  the 
"tradesman,"  no  matter  how  cultured  or  prosperous,  was 
assigned  to  a  lower  position  than  the  veriest  mutton-head 
among  professional  men.  The  learned  professions  consti- 
tuted the  nobility  of  the  New  World,  and,  as  Pride  is 
ususally  the  handmaid  of  Intellect,  drew  to  them  the  best 
minds  of  the  Nation.  Socially  the  merchant  ranked  with 
the  mechanic,  the  mechanic  the  laborer,  and  all  the  jour- 
nalist, who  was  regarded  as  a  ne'er-do-weel — a  mere  lit- 
erary scullion.  But  class  distinction,  grounded  on  voca- 
tion, was  a  European  cult,  in  nowise  adapted  to  the  Amer- 
ican atmosphere,  which  vibrated  to  the  cry  of  "liberty, 
equality  and  fraternity."  It  perished,  and  for  a  nobility 
founded  on  occupation  was  substituted  one  of  brains,  and 
now  men  are  expected  to  adorn  their  vocation  instead  of 
vice  versa.  Not  only  has  the  "tradesman"  been  placed  on 
a  social  equality  with  his  professional  brother,  but  the  me- 
chanic has  also  taken  his  place  in  the  "American  house  of 
lords,"  the  once  despised  journalist  become  a  multi-mil- 
lionaire and,  in  his  own  opinion  at  least,  arbiter  of  the  des- 


ISO  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

tiny  of  the  Nation.  Our  successful  merchants  and  miners, 
inventors  and  journalists  are  even  crowding  the  D.  D's, 
M.  D's  and  LL.  D's  for  social  pre-eminence.  The  rewards 
of  commerce  are  greater  than  those  of  the  professions,  and 
the  better  intelligence  of  the  country,  being  in  nowise  in- 
different to  the  almighty  dollar  nor  restrained  by  social 
scruples,  "goes  into  trade"  and  prospers,  instead  of  hang- 
ing its  shingle  on  the  outer  wall  and  sitting  down  to  semi- 
starvation.  And  the  very  best  and  brightest  minds  that 
commerce  can  command  are  put  "on  the  road."  There's 
where  they  are  needed.  The  most  stupid  blockhead  may 
learn  routine  duty  in  a  great  mercantile  establishment; 
but  the  man  sent  out  in  these  days  of  sharp  competition 
and  close  margins  to  extend  trade,  must  not  only  know  a 
hawk  from  a  handsaw  and  the  cost  of  each,  but  have  an 
accurate  knowledge  of  human  nature.  He  must  be  a 
strategist — be  able  to  win  the  confidence,  even  friendship 
of  men  of  antithetical  dispositions,  tastes  and  habits,  for 
the  proverb  that  "there's  no  sentiment  in  trade"  is  far 
from  true.  Other  things  being  equal,  our  custom  and  our 
affections  keep  close  company.  Pope  was  probably 
viewing  the  Drummer  with  prophetic  eye  when  he  de- 
clared that,  "The  proper  study  of  mankind  is  man." 

We  have  carried  the  division  of  labor  too  far  for  the  per- 
fect intellectual  development  of  the  race.  If  it  once  took 
nine  tailors  to  make  a  man,  it  now  requires  even  more  "spe- 
cialists." Each  devotes  himself  to  some  particular  line, 
whether  it  be  the  curing  of  corns  or  the  expounding  of  con- 
stitutional law,  and  follows  it  so  assiduously  that  he  usually 
knows  little  of  anything  else.  It  now  requires  about  a 
dozen  different  kinds  of  doctors  to  keep  the  human  mechan- 
ism in  perfect  running  order — each  of  the  important  organs 
must  have  its  specialist — and  the  same  rule  of  subdivision 
obtains  in  every  trade  and  profession.  The  specialist  usu- 
ally becomes  a  one- faculty  man  instead  of  a  fully  developed 
intellectual  athlete.  One  may  know  comparatively  noth- 
ing beyond  theology,  or  some  single  division  of  law  or  med- 
icine, and  become  wealthy  and  distinguished  if  he  but  know 
that  one  thing  well;  but  the  drummer  who  attempts  to  do 
business  without  a  good  supply  of  general  information  is 
going  to  get  strung  at  the  quarter-pole.  It  is  an  important 
part  of  his  stock-in-trade — he  must  be  able  to  interest  the 
prospective  purchaser,  no  matter  what  his  hobby.  Shake- 
speare assures  us  that  "home-keeping  youths  have  ever 
homely  wits."  However  that  may  be,  certain  it  is  that  the 
intellect  of  man  is  sharpened  by  frequent  contact  with  his 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  151 

fellows,  is  strengthened  by  that  stubborn  "battle  of  life"  in 
which  the  weakest  go  to  the  wall. 


The  Travelers'  Protective  Association  of  America  was  or- 
ganized in  1882,  "For  the  purpose  of  furthering  the  interest 
of  commercial  travelers,  by  giving  them  better  hotel  accom- 
modations, cheaper  rates  of  travel  and  greater  allowance  of 
baggage."  It  got  considerably  in  debt  after  eight  years'  ex- 
istence, and  at  the  convention  in  Denver  in  1890,  St.  Louis 
merchants  offered  to  pay  the  indebtedness,  amounting  to 
$2200,  if  the  headquarters  were  located  in  that  city,  and  this 
offer  was  accepted.  That  year  the  annual  membership  fee 
was  raised  from  $2  to  $10  and  an  insurance  feature  added, 
allowing  $3000  in  case  of  death  by  accident  and  $15  a  week 
in  case  of  partial  disability.  At  the  reorganization  Texas 
had  about  four  times  the  membership  of  any  other  state. 
It  was,  in  fact,  greater  than  all  the  rest  combined.  Texas 
was  "the  banner  state"  at  the  close  of  the  first  year  after  re- 
organization, when  the  total  membership  of  the  National 
Association  amounted  to  some  1800.  Next  year  the  con- 
vention met  at  Little  Rock,  and  the  membership  approxi- 
mated 2500.  The  following  year  it  was  held  at  Old  Point 
Comfort,  Va.,  and  the  membership  was  about  3000.  In  1893 
it  was  held  at  Peoria,  111.,  and  the  membership  had  increased 
to  nearly  4000.  The  death  indemnity  was  raised  to  $4000 
and  the  weekly  indemnity,  in  case  of  disability  'resulting 
from  accident,  made  $25.  In  1894  the  National  convention 
was  held  at  Milwaukee,  Wis.,  and  the  membership  had  in- 
creased to  over  7000.  The  death  benefit  was  raised  to 
$5000,  the  weekly  indemnity  remaining  as  before,  $25.  It  is 
believed  that  the  membership  now  exceeds  11,000 — a  mighty 
army  of  "hustlers"  marshalled  beneath  the  banner  of  Com- 
merce, keeping  step  to  the  music  of  Progress. 

The  National  Convention  of  the  T.  P.  A.  will  be  held  this 
month  in  San  Antonio,  the  metropolis  of  Texas,  the  most 
interesting  city  on  the  American  continent.  The  "boys" 
will  fall  in  love  with  San  Antonio,  because,  like  themselves, 
it  is  broad-gauged,  hospitable,  little  addicted  to  the  vice  of 
hypocrisy.  Many  of  them  who  come  from  the  older  states 
will  probably  expect  to  find  a  wild  and  woolly  frontier  town, 
where  bad  whisky's  four-bits  a  drink  and  the  festive  cowboy 
chases  the  elusive  longhorn  through  the  principal  streets, 
shoots  out  the  kerosene  street-lamps,  and  rides  his  broncho 
up  to  the  bar  when  yearning  for  a  compound  of  tarantula- 
juice  and  creosote ;  to  be  met  at  the  train  by  a  deputation  of 


152  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

leading  citizens  who  wear  their  pants  in  their  boots  and  boy- 
cott their  barbers,  and  welcomed  by  Mayor  Elmendorf  from 
the  hurricane  deck  of  a  cayuse  with  an  oration  somewhat  as 
follows : 

"Well,  fellers,  y're  at  the  end  o'  the  trail.  We've  got  y' 
corraled  an'  we're  agoin  to  treat  y'  white.  That's  what. 
We've  laid  in  two  dozen  skins  o'  mescal  fur  the  occasion, 
histed  the  American  flag  an'  fixed  to  hang  a  horsethief  fer 
your  amusement.  After  he's  swung  off  and  has  quit  kick- 
ing we'll  rope  a  steer  jist  to  show  you  how  it's  done,  have  a 
bull-fight  in  Main  Plaza  an'  then  adjourn  t'  the  saloon  of 
Alkali  Ike  an'  enjoy  a  fandango.  If  any  o'  youens  feel  like 
chancin'  yer  pile  y'll  find  the  squarest  poker  game  at  Ike's 
you  ever  sot  into.  Play  'er  stiff  as  y'  like.  Make  your- 
selves t'  home.  If  Broncho  Pete  or  Grizzly  Bill  goes  to 
shootin'  holes  in  yer  plug  hats  without  an  invite  jist  report 
t'  me,  alcalde  of  the  burg,  an'  me'n  Bryan  Callaghan  '11 
straighten  the  cusses  out  in  two  shakes  of  a  maverick's  tail. 
We'll  now  have  some  music  by  the  Jewsharp  quartette,  with 
Mesquite  Charlie  workin'  in  the  lead.  You'll  then  take  a 
drink  with  his-zonner,  which  is  me,  after  which  we'll  ad- 
journ to  my  hacienda  over  on  the  Nueces  and  hist  in  a  few 
slugs  o'  Kansas  bacon  and  biled  yerbs." 

But  those  who  come  expecting  to  "rough  it"  will  be  hap- 
pily disappointed.  They  will  find  a  cultured  city  possess- 
ing all  the  modern  improvements,  including  a  municipal 
debt — a  grand  old  commonwealth  gleaming  in  the  glorious 
sunlight  of  West  Texas,  a  jewel  pendant  from  the  fringe  of 
Civilization's  robe.  They  will  find  there,  as  nowhere  else 
in  the  New  World,  a  romantic  blending  of  the  past  and 
present — the  Sixteenth  and  Nineteenth  centuries  existing 
side  by  side  "in  harmonious  discord."  They  will  find  that 
San  Antonio  is  not  so  ultra-progressive  as  some  of  her  sister 
cities — that  her  people  have  not  yet  cast  aside  humanity  and 
anointed  themselves  with  hypocrisy,  like  ancient  runners 
with  oil,  for  that  race  whose  guerdon  is  gold.  San  Antonio 
puts  on  few  frills.  Her  hospitality  is  of  the  old-fashioned 
sort  that  may  be  felt  as  well  as  seen.  She  does  not  give  the 
stranger  a  stereotyped  two-for-a-quarter  smile,  an  ice-cream 
handshake  and  expect  to  be  repaid  with  a  paean  of  praise 
that  will  send  the  price  of  real  estate  up  ten  per  cent.  If 
he  is  worthy  she  takes  him  to  her  great  warm  heart  and 
treats  him  so  well — and  so  often — that,  like  the  worn  voy- 
ageurs  in  the  lotos-eaters'  land,  he's  loth  to  longer  roam. 
Of  course  there  are  whining  Uriah  Keeps  with  itching  fin- 
gers, and  hypocrites  with  frappe  hearts  in  the  Alamo  City, 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  153 

as  elsewhere;  but  she  has  put  them  on  a  "Reservation," 
figuratively  speaking",  with  other  disreputable  characters — 
banished  them  to  a  social  trans-San  Pedro,  so  to  speak,  and 
franied  her  rule  of  conduct  without  their  assistance. 

San  Antonio  possesses  for  the  poet,  the  philosopher  and 
the  student  an  inexpressible  charm.  Its  skies  are  brighter 
than  those  of  France,  its  airs  softer  than  those  of  Italy. 
There  Anglo-Saxon  chivalry  rose  to  its  glorious  zenith. 
There  was  fought  America's  Thermopylae,  there  Ben  Milam 
led  his  Spartan  band  against  the  fortifications  and  five-fold 
force  of  General  Cos,  and  fell,  crowned  with  the  victor's 
wreath.  There  was  planted  the  standard  of  Christian  faith 
when  Texas  was  peopled  by  wild  beasts  and  still  more  sav- 
age men.  On  the  ancient  battlements  of  San  Antonio  have 
floated^  the  banners  of  six  nations,  and  through  her  streets 
for  an  hundred  and  fifty  years  has  ebbed  and  flowed  the 
crimson  tide  of  war. 

We  must  have  several  days — and  nights — for  sight-seeing 
in  San  Antonio.  We  must  dream  about  the  ruined  mis- 
sions where,  before  our  grand-sires'  day,  the  savage  was 
taught  to  humble  himself  before  the  sacred  cross ;  about  the 
Alamo,  that  charnel  house  of  chivalry.  We  will  be  shown 
a  dozen  different  places  where  Bowie  bled  and  Crockett 
died;  but  no  matter — it's  all  holy  ground.  We  must  have 
a  Mexican  supper  in  the  open  air  and  a  talk  with  the  chile 
queens.  We  must  have  hot  tamales,  with  ice  cold  beer  on 
the  side  to  temper  the  internal  fires,  listen  to  the  music  in 
Alamo  Plaza  and  witness  the  Battle  of  Flowers.  And  above 
all,  we  must  see  San  Antonio  by  moonlight — see  it  from  the 
roof  of  some  tall  building  when,  bathed  in  the  silver  flood 
it  becomes  a  veritable  vision  of  beauty,  the  apotheosis  of 
romance,  a  fairy  city  which,  like  the  baseless  fabric  of  a 
dream,  we  expect  to  fade  from  sight  with  the  coming  of  the 
sun.  Beneath  the  magic  rays  of  the  southern  moon  the 
grimiest  adobe  is  transformed  into  Parian  marble,  the  mean- 
est jacal  becomes  an  Edenic  bower.  The  turreted  postofHce 
looms  up  a  mighty  mediaeval  castle,  the  placid  river  a 
tangled  ribbon  of  burnished  silver,  a  magic  mirror,  reflect- 
ing the  unreal.  A  brace  of  mocking-birds  call  to  each  other 
from  the  depths  of  umbrageous  foliage,  then  pour  forth 
a  flood  of  melody  such  as  Orpheus  never  equaled ;  the  fire- 
flies gleam  in  the  cool  gardens;  there  comes  the  rhythmic 
pulse  of  dancing  feet  on  oaken  floors ;  the  sensuous  perfume 
of  dew-bespangled  flowers  hangs  heavy  in  the  air  and  sinks 
into  the  blood  like  voluptuous  music,  while  overhead  rides 
serene  the  silver  Queen  of  Night,  midway  between  the 


154  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

sleeping-  earth  and  "the  star-domed  City  of  God."  But,  as 
the  governor  of  North  Carolina  remarked  to  the  chief  exe- 
cutive of — Here's  hopin'. 


I  once  attempted  to  become  a  road  angel,  but  found  the 
flying  a  trifle  too  laborious  for  my  feeble  wings.  I  had 
attained  to  the  mature  age  of  seventeen  years  when  I  deter- 
mined to  become  a  knight  of  the  grip  and  go  forth  conquer- 
ing and  to  conquer.  I  noticed  that  they  usually  wore  good 
clothes  and  rode  in  the  ladies'  coach ;  so,  with  a  sigh,  I 
surrendered  my  cherished  ambition  to  become  President  of 
this  great  Republic  and  pass  my  name  down  to  posterity  as 
one  of  the  numerous  stepfathers  of  my  country,  and  devoted 
all  my  energies  to  the  accomplishment  of  my  new  destiny. 
I  secured  a  position  with  an  Indianapolis  printing  house — 
on  commission — and  sallied  forth  into  the  small  towns.  I 
was  a  Drummer  at  last  and  felt,  with  Monte  Cristo,  that 
the  world  was  mine.  But  it  wasn't — at  least  not  just  yet. 
The  first  merchant  I  tackled  seemed  delighted  to  see  me. 
His  "What  can  I  do  for  you  to-day,"  was  unctious  as  the 
Song  of  Solomon,  as  oily  as  a  keg  of  cotton  seed  butter; 
but  my  reply  seemed  to  freeze  the  genial  current  of  his  soul. 
His  encouraging  smile  faded  like  artificial  beauty  in  a  pic- 
nic shower,  his  suavity  slipped  its  trolley-pole,  his  milk  of 
human  kindness  shrunk  from  a  gallon  an  hour  to  half  a  pint 
a  day.  I  talked  to  him  and  he  listened  with  the  ennuied  air 
of  a  man  to  whom  life  is  a  burden  and  heaven  not  his  hope. 
I  learned  that  he  was  a  Presbyterian,  and  rung  in  a  few 
impromptu  remarks  on  original  sin  without  seeming  to 
interest  him.  Even  a  short  disquisition  on  foreordination 
failed  to  fetch  him.  I  persuaded  him  to  examine  my  samples 
and  he  finally  gave  some  faint  signs  of  life,  gradually  grew 
interested  and  asked  for  prices.  After  an  hour's  seance  I 
was  sure  of  a  big  C.  O.  D.  order,  but  he  was  called  to  serve 
a  customer,  and  I  waited — trembling  on  the  verge  of  my 
first  triumph.  I  was  glad  that  I  hadn't  killed  him  during 
the  first  ten  minutes.  I  said  to  myself  that  with  patience  for 
a  lever  and  good-nature  for  a  fulcrum  I  could  move  the 
world.  While  I  was  congratulating  myself  my  prospective 
patron  slipped  out  the  back  door  and  went  to  dinner, 
leaving  a  stuttering  clerk  in  charge,  who  tried  to  tell  me 
what  had  become  of  the  boss,  but  sprung  his  pneumatic-tire 
at  the  half-way  house  and  had  to  withdraw.  When  the 
merchant  returned  with  his  surcingle  extended  a  notch  or 
two  he  told  me  that  he  had  more  stationery  than  he  knew 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  155 

what  to  do  with — had  no  intention  of  placing  an  order. 
Then  I  was  sorry  that  I  hadn't  killed  him  when  1  could  have 
proved  justifiable  homicide.  As  I  slowly  packed  my  sam- 
ples I  resolved  never  to  be  polite  and  patient  again — and 
I  haven't.  I  began  to  inspect  the  clothing  with  which  his 
tables  were  piled.  He  at  once  became  interested.  Did  I 
want  to  buy  a  suit?  I  hardly  knew.  I  became  distant,  re- 
served, and  he  set  to  work  to  thaw  me  out.  I  asked  for 
prices  and  his  politeness  fairly  oozed  out  at  the  pores — his 
milk  of  human  kindness  increased  momentarily  in  geometri- 
cal ratio.  I  was  persuaded  to  try  on  various  suits — became 
well  nigh  enthusiastic  in  the  matter  of  dress.  For  two 
'hours  he  perspired  and  tumbled  his  stock,  trying  to  find 
something  that  would  satisfy  my  McAllisterian  taste,  then 
I  told  him  I  was  overstocked  with  clothes — had  no  intention 
of  ordering  more,  and  departed,  feeling  that  I  had  tied  in 
the  ears  of  an  unconscionable  ass  a  double  bcw-knot  that 
wouldn't  come  out  in  a  hurry.  By  working  hard  the  rest 
of  the  day  I  managed  to  take  one  order — for  a  pack  of 
visiting  cards.  I  told  the  merchant  that  I  would  ship  them 
f.  o.  b.  and  draw  on  him  in  30  days.  Then  I  threw  my 
sample-case  in  the  river  and  hoofed  it  home.  If  I  ever 
become  a  successful  Drummer  it  will  be  as  a  member  of 
the  Salvation  Army. 


CASH  VS.  COIN. 

Coin,  a  free  silver  advocate,  and  Cash,  a  hardshell  gold- 
bug,  have  been  conducting  suppositions  schools  for  the  in- 
struction of  the  common  people  in  the  so-called  "science 
of  money."  When  first  informed  that  their  foolish  little 
books  were  having  an  extensive  sale,  I  supposed  that  the 
people  regarded  them  simply  as  satires  and  read  them  to  be 
amused;  for  not  even  a  controversy  between  Mesdames 
Partington  and  Malaprop  across  the  back-yard  fence  anent 
the  proper  method  of  making  soft-soap  or  skinning  eels 
could  be  more  excruciatingly  funny.  But  I  learned  some- 
what to  my  surprise,  that  many  people  take  them  seriously 
-—even  study  them  with  attention,  hoping  to  gain  valuable 
information  therefrom.  I  would  not  now  be  surprised  to 
hear  that  Munchausen  and  Mother  Goose  had  been  adopted 
as  text-books  by  our  universities.  Coin  should  be  soundly 
spanked  for  his  presumption  and  placed  in  the  A  B  C  class 
of  economics,  and  Cash  sentenced  to  the  dunce-block  for 


156  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

at  least  a  dozen  years.  There  is  some  hope  for  the  first — 
he  may  outgrow  his  vagaries;  but  the  latter  signs  a  dozen 
certificates  to  his  own  irremediable  idiocy.  He  begins  with 
a  false  premise  and  closes  with  a  stolen  currency  plan.  He 
brazenly  makes  misleading  statements,  then  appears  to  take 
a  fiendish  delight  in  exposing  his  own  falsehoods.  Not 
being  a  metallist,  I  might  be  expected  to  regard  the  merry 
war  now  raging  between  the  gold  and  silverites  much  as  the 
old  woman  did  the  controversy  between  her  husband  and 
the  bear;  but  of  two  evils  there  is  always  a  least.  If  we 
must  have  a  money  that  will  either  scale  the  mighty  fortunes 
of  the  millionaires  or  ruthlessly  despoil  the  pantries  of  the 
poor,  in  God's  name  give  us  the  first.  A  depreciating  cur- 
rency is  always  an  evil.  It  has  ever  been  the  bete-noire  of 
the  ultra  conservative  economists ;  but  I  defy  them  to  point 
to  one  nation  it  has  irremediably  ruined,  to  one  people  it 
has  hopelessly  impoverished.  Yet  the  strand  of  Time  is 
thick-strewn  with  wreck  and  ruin  wrought  by  an  appreci- 
ating currency, — a  currency  that  concentrated  the  wealth 
of  mighty  nations  in  the  hands  of  a  favored  few  and  made 
of  Mie  masses  miserable  bondmen — compelled  them  to 
choose  between  the  bread  of  charity  and  the  blood  of  revo- 
lution. 

The  free  and  unlimited  coinage  of  silver  would  be  a  mis- 
take per  se,  but  wisdom  personified  compared  with  gold 
monometallism.  It  would  not  induct  the  toiling  millions 
into  an  economic  millenium;  but  it  would  constitute  a  step 
in  the  emancipation  of  the  industrial  Israel.  It  were  better 
to  wander  forty  years  in  the  monetary  wilderness,  and  at 
last  reach  a  fair  Canaan,  than  to  content  ourselves  with 
Egyptian  bondage  and  the  making  of  bricks  without  straw. 
Such  being  the  case,  it  were  well  to  look  with  a  tolerant  eye 
on  the  "mistakes  of  Moses" — who  means  well — and  align 
our  batteries  full  upon  old  Pharaoh.  I  have  no  doubt  that 
selfish  monarch  and  his  obsequious  ministers  talked  to  the 
groaning  Israelites  much  as  the  money  kings  of  to-day  talk 
to  the  slaves  of  our  industrial  system.  I  can  easily  imagine 
them  saying: 

"What  would  ye;  leave  the  flesh-pots  of  Egypt — whose 
savor  ye  are  permitted  to  smell — and  take  to  the  desert? 
Would  ye  follow  to  your  certain  destruction  this  bewhisk- 
ered  fanatic,  this  foolish  Midianite  whose  calamity  clacking 
hath  made  ye  discontent?  Behold  the  plagues  already 
brought  upon  the  land  by  him !  See  how  much  better  off  ye 
are  than  was  labor  four  centuries  ago.  Why,  we  can  prove 
it  by  the  government  statistics !  Jacob  and  his  sons  lived  in 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  157 

tents  and  came  near  starving  to  death,  while  ye  inherit 
houses  which  ye  have  builded  for  yourselves,  and  for  which 
ye  pay  rent — and  there's  a  free  soup  joint  in  every  city. 
Talk  about  being  oppressed !  Why,  the  value  of  farm  prop- 
erty has  doubled,  and  there  was  never  a  time  when  ye 
could  purchase  so  much  with  a  talent  of  gold — if  ye  have 
the  talent." 

The  continual  cry  of  the  plutocrats  through  their  news- 
papers and  bipedal  phonographs  that  the  condition  of  labor 
is  better  to-day  than  in  times  past,  is  calculated  to  give  sen- 
sible people  a  chronic  case  of  ennui.  It  should  be  better 
— much  better.  The  workman  of  today  can  create  more 
wealth  in  a  week  than  could  his  grandsire  in  a  month,  and 
the  more  he  creates  the  more  he  should  enjoy.  The  con- 
dition of  the  laborer,  the  farmer  and  the  mechanic  should 
have  improved  more  than  300  per  cent  during  the  past  cent- 
ury. But  has  it?  A  century  ago  there  was  work  for  all 
and  labor  was  sure  of  its  reward.  There  was  no  such  thing 
as  able-bodied  pauperism.  How  is  it  to-day?  The  Chicago 
Tribune,  an  ultra-conservative  paper  of  the  gold-bug  school, 
estimated  not  long  ago  that  a  million  American  workmen 
were  out  of  employment — subsisting  on  the  crumbs  that  fall 
from  Dives'  banquet-board  and  accepting  his  cast-off  cloth- 
ing with  obsequious  thankfulness. 

Cash  opens  his  school  with  an  object  lesson  intended  to 
be  very  impressive.  He  informs  us  by  means  of  diagrams 
that  the  wage  of  labor  well-nigh  doubled  and  its  purchasing 
power  almost  trebled  from  1860  to  1892.  I  had  no  idea 
the  workman  *was  getting  along  so  well !  If  he  keeps  up 
that  lick  for  a  few  years  he  will  be  living  in  brown  stone 
fronts  and  clipping  bond  coupons — instead  of  going  hungry 
to  bed  and  wondering  where  in  the  Devil's  name  he  is  to 
get  the  money  to  meet  the  interest  on  his  mortgage  or  make 
the  monthly  payment  on  the  little  jag  of  cheap  furniture 
he  purchased  on  the  installment  plan.  With  Cash's  dia- 
grams before  us  it  is  difficult  to  understand  how  it  chanced 
that  a  million  men  were  taking  up  their  belly-bands  a  notch 
for  breakfast,  dining  on  free  soup  and  sucking  their  breath 
for  supper.  The  average  of  wages  is  higher  to-day  than  in 
1890,  but  lower  than  in  1870.  From  1875  to  1892  the 
average  advanced  one-half  of  one  per  cent — then  dropped 
fully  15  per  cent?  You  can  hire  labor  cheaper  to-day  than 
a  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  and  there  are  more  men  waiting 
for  jobs.  Yet  in  a  quarter  of  a  century  the  wealth- creating 
power — the  value — of  labor  has  almost  doubled.  Does  not 
that  clearly  demonstrate  that  there's  something  radically 


158  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

wrong?  Despite  the  fact  that  the  wealth-creating  power  of 
labor  has  more  than  trebled  during  the  century,  the  fact 
remains — a  fact  as  gross  to  sense  as  the  sun  at  noon  to-day— 
that  never  before  in  the  history  of  this  nation,  barring  the 
acute  stages  of  two  or  three  panics,  was  it  so  difficult  for 
the  laborer,  the  mechanic  and  the  farmer  to  make  an  honest 
living,  or  for  the  debtor  to  discharge  his  obligations.  The 
gulf  that  separates  Dives  and  Lazarus  is  wider  than  ever 
before — and  this  despite  the  fact  that  the  average  of  wages 
is  higher  and  their  purchasing  power  greater  than  forty 
years  ago.  As  civilization  advances  the  standard  of  living 
rises.  Our  ancestors  lived  on  roots  and  raw  meat,  inhabited 
caves  and  hollow  trees  and  attired  themselves  in  a  streak, 
of  red  paint  for  winter  overcoat  and  a  few  freckles  for  sum- 
mer ulster;  but  as  the  world  made  progress  from  pure 
animalism  the  luxuries  of  one  generation  became  the  neces- 
sities of  the  next — a  fact  which  Cash  has  not  dreamed  of  in 
his  philosophy.  He  assures  us  that  the  principal  cause  of 
the  panic  of  1893  was  "the  decreased  cost  of  production." 
In  other  words,  when  the  people  discovered  that  they  could 
produce  two  bushels  of  wheat  and  two  bolts  of  cloth  with 
the  expenditure  of  the  same  energy  that  was  required  in 
former  times  to  produce  one  bushel  of  wheat  and  one  bolt 
of  cloth,  they  became  panic-stricken — were  so  badly  scared 
that  they  proceeded  to  go  naked  and  hungry!  He  first 
points  to  the  increased  purchasing  power  of  wages  as  a 
boon  enjoyed  by  the  workingman,  then  assures  him  that 
the  decrease  in  the  cost  of  commodities  was  what  turned  him 
into  a  tramp!  It  seems  almost  like  cruelty  to  animals  to 
criticise  such  a  consummate  idiot.  It  is  only  a  lurking 
suspicion  that  Cash  is  more  knave  than  fool — that  he  has 
been  duly  employed  to  pull  wool  over  the  eyes  of  the  ignor- 
ant— that  leads  the  Iconoclast  to  dignify  his  ridiculous  book 
with  this  review.  I  have  some  respect  for  an  honest  ignor- 
amus, but  when  a  man  possessing  the  faintest  adumbration 
of  intellect  employs  it  in  assisting  Greed  to  despoil  Need, 
he  deserves  to  have  his  shirt-tail  set  on  fire. 

Cash  "admits  that  we  are  in  the  midst  of  a  great  financial 
and  industrial  depression" — precipitated  by  an  increased 
ability  to  create  wealth — but  would  not  have  us  become 
discouraged.  He  assures  us  that  "this  panic  will  not  always 
last."  Let  us  hope  not;  but  if  we  may  judge  the  future 
by  the  past — and  cuckoo  economics  still  prevail — it  will 
scarce  have  blown  itself  out  before  another  is  ripe.  In 
twenty  years  we  have  had  three  panics,  and  the  depression 
which  follows  these  crashes  usually  lasts  from  three  to  seven 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  159 

years.  In  other  words,  the  workman  can  depend  upon  being 
employed  at  fair  wages  and  the  planter  confidently  expect 
to  purchase  with  his  cotton  enough  Paris  green  to  poison 
the  worms,  about  one  year  in  four!  And  it  is  the  occasional 
oasis  in  the  industrial  desert  which  Cash  employs  to  prove 
that  labor  is  fairly  reveling  in  Lucullean  luxury — that  those 
who  are  striving  to  emancipate  it  from  poverty  are  a  pack 
of  pestiferous  demagogues.  To  illustrate  how  rapidly  the 
man  with  the  hoe  is  becoming  a  gold-plated  plutocrat,  he 
points  out  that  the  increase  of  the  value  of  farm  property 
in  Minnesota  during  the  past  ten  years  amounts  to  more 
than  $176,000,00x3,  while  the  mortgage  debt  increased  but 
$4,000,000  during  the  same  time.  He  neglects,  however, 
to  mention  that  Minnesota  is  a  new  state,  that  the  immigra- 
tion, has  been  very  large  and  the  increase  in  farm  values 
chiefly  due  to  augmented  population.  According  to  his 
figures  the  increase  in  land  values  represents  about  five- 
sixth  of  the  total,  but  as  he  fails  to  state  how  much  of  this 
represents  improvements  and  how  much  "unearned  incre- 
ment" his  statistics  are  utterly  worthless.  The  increase  in 
land  values  may  be  entirely  due  to  increase  in  population 
for  aught  he  shows  to  the  contrary,  which  would  leave 
about  $30,000,000  to  represent  the  reward  of  labor  in  one  of 
the  greatest  agricultural  states  for  a  period  of  ten  years. 
Had  Cash  been  seeking  the  truth  instead  of  something  to 
bolster  up  a  preconceived  theory,  he  would  have  taken  for 
illustration  one  of  the  older  agricultural  States.  He  might 
as  well  have  selected  Oklahoma  and  argued  from  the  rapid 
increase  of  farm  values  that  the  American  agriculturalists 
are  becoming  veritable  Astors !  Having  given  the  increase 
in  farm  debt,  he  should  have  given  the  amount  of  mortgage 
foreclosure.  There  is  nothing  in  his  statistics  to  show  that 
half  the  arable  area  of  Minnesota  has  not  passed  into  the 
ownership  of  Eastern  capitalists  during  the  decade.  Fig- 
ures do  not  lie,  to  be  sure,  but — to  quote  from  Cash — "they 
are  the  best  friends  a  financial  liar  ever  had." 

He  tells  us,  and  quite  truly,  that  "the  credits  of  the  coun- 
try are  based  on  the  property  of  the  country" — that  the  debts 
of  the  country  are  paid  with  the  products  of  the  soil  and 
the  handicrafts  of  the  people."  To  the  query,  How  can  we 
repay  the  wealth  we  have  borrowed  from  John  Bull,  he  re- 
plies :  "We  will  send  the  Englishman  something  to  eat 
and  to  wear."  That  being  the  case,  what  has  our  currency 
to  do  with  our  foreign  trade?  Yet  he  tells  us  to  reject  cur- 
rency plans  "when  they  propose  a  money  good  enough  to 
use  at  home,  but  which  the  foreigner  will  not  take."  Did 


160  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

we  ever  make  a  money  that  the  foreigner  would  "take?" 
Has  the  foreigner  made  money  since  the  establishment  of  a 
purely  American  currency  system  that  we  would  "take?'' 
If  Cash  had  a  hatful  of  British  guineas  he  couldn't  buy  a 
beer  with  them  in  the  entire  city  of  Chicago.  He  could 
doubtless  find  some  one  to  purchase  them  by  weight,  just  as 
he  could  go  on  the  market  and  dispose  of  a  carload  of  pork 
or  pig-iron. 

Cash  undertakes  to  demonstrate  to  a  doubting  world 
that  gold,  instead  of  increasing,  is  actually  decreasing  in 
value.  He  assures  us  that  a  day's  labor  is  the  measure  of 
value, — in  fact  the  only  one — declares  that  "it  will  buy 
more  than  one  and  a  half  times  as  much  gold  as  it  would 
forty  years  ago,  and  closes  with  the  triumphant  cackle  of 
an  old  hen  that,  by  laborious  effort,  has  succeeded  in  lay- 
ing a  new  egg.  Accepting  a  day's  labor  as  the  best  pos- 
sible measure  of  value,  what  does  Cash,  prove  by  it? 
Simply  that  gold,  instead  of  having  diminished  in  value, 
has  greatly  increased.  His  assumption  that  a  day's  labor 
will  buy  a  third  more  gold  than  it  would  forty  years  ago 
might  be  easily  disproved ;  but  granting  that  his  premise 
is  correct,  his  conclusion  is  wrong.  Labor  is  valuable  only 
as  it  is  productive,  and  Cash  assures  us  that  a  given 
amount  of  human  effort  will  produce  three  times  as  much 
wheat  and  more  than  three  times  as  much  cotton  cloth  as 
it  would  forty  years  ago.  We  know  that  the  same  rule  ap- 
plies to  almost  every  line  of  human  endeavor — because 
Cash  has  told  us  so.  What  does  this  signify?  Simply  that 
in  forty  years  labor  has  about  trebled  in  value;  yet  a 
given  amount,  instead  of  buying  three  times  as  much 
gold,  will  purchase  but  a  trifle  more  than  one  and-half 
times  as  much.  Does  Cash  catch  the  idea?  If  his  conclu- 
sion that  gold  has  decreased  in  value  more  than  50  per 
cent  in  forty  years  be  correct,  I  submit  that  as  a  measure 
of  value  it  is  a  miserable  failure  and  we  had  best  find  a 
better  one. 

A  suspicion  that  gold  and  paper  currency  bottomed 
thereon  do  not  constitute  the  best  possible  exchange  me- 
dium seems  to  have  occurred  to  Cash,  for  he  suggests  one 
composed  of  greenbacks  "convertible  into  a  2  per  cent 
government  bond — an  intercontrovertible  bond  which 
may  be  exchanged  for  the  greenbacks  again  upon  the  de- 
mand of  the  holder/'  then  adds:  "The  proposed  credit 
money  would  constitute  a  flexible  currency  which  would 
always  answer  the  demands  of  business.  It  would  in- 
crease and  decrease  according  to  demand,  and  no  cur- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  161 

rency  famine  could  occur  so  long  as  there  were  outstand- 
ing bonds." 

Cash  has  appropriated,  without  so  much  as  by-your- 
leave,  the  currency  plan  which  I  proposed  in  the  Icono- 
clast for  December,  1891,  and  elaborated  in  a  widely 
circulated  pamphlet  entitled  "Dives  and  Lazarus,"  pub- 
lished June  i,  1894.  It  was  this  plan  which  the  financiers 
of  Germany  discussed  and  approved  at  Berlin  in  1893.  I 
would  feel  highly  gratified  by  an  endorsement  of  my  in- 
terconvertible bond-currency  plan  by  the  spokesman 
put  forward  by  the  American  gold  monometalists  had  he 
not  taken  the  precaution  to  spoil  it  by  stipulating  that 
we  "keep  as  the  standard  of  value  the  gold  dollar  of  pres- 
ent weight  and  fineness" — which  he  assures  us  has  fluctu- 
ated more  than  50  per  cent  in  forty  years!  Still  I  am 
grateful  for  the  direct  admission  by  the  gold-bugs  that  it 
is  not  necessary  to  bottom  our  paper  money  on  metal,  and 
for  the  tacit  admission  that  a  currency  so  constituted  can- 
not possibly  be  a  flexible  currency,  answering  to  the  de- 
mands of  business  and  preventing  money  famines.  But 
just  how  we  are  to  retain  the  fluctuating  gold  dollar  as 
the  standard  of  value  when  we  have  a  currency  in  nowise 
dependent  upon  the  yellow  metal  is  beyond  my  philoso- 
phy. L  fear  that  Cash  has  brooded  over  the  money  prob« 
lem  until  his  little  think-tank  has  got  full  of  logical  wig- 
gletails.  If  the  bond-currency  plan  works  it  will  soon  be 
adopted  by  all  enlightened  nations  and  the  monetary  oc- 
cupation of  gold  will  be  gone.  The  decreased  demand  will 
cause  a  slump  in  price  greater  than  Cash  figures  out  has 
occurred  in  the  last  forty  years. 

To  emancipate  our  measures  of  value  from  the  laws 
which  govern  commodities  and  make  it  as  immutable  as 
the  multiplication  table,  I  suggested  the  plan  which  Cash 
seems  unable  to  comprehend.  For  his  benefit  I  will  re- 
state it  as  briefly  as  possible : 

Let  the  government  sell  just  as  many  one  per  cent  inter- 
convertible bonds  as  the  people  desire,  the  proceeds  con- 
stituting a  redemption  fund.  Any  one  having  United 
States  currency  of  any  kind  could  exchange  it  for  these 
bonds  redeemable  on  demand.  Add  full  legal  tender 
treasury  notes  to  the  volume  of  currency  just  so  long  as 
the  increase  will  remain  in  the  channels  of  trade.  When 
people  are  buying  bonds  the  currency  is  redundant ;  when 
they  are  selling  bonds  the  volume  of  currency  is  too  small 
to  properly  serve  the  ends  of  commerce.  In  the  bond  re- 
demption fund  we  have  an  infallible  indicator  of  the  cur- 


162  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

rency  requirements  of  the  country.  When  the  volume  of 
currency  is  too  small  its  purchasing  power  increases  un- 
til equal  to  the  work  required  of  it;  when  redundant  its 
purchasing  power  decreases  until  all  is  employed.  By  this 
system  the  volume  of  currency  would  adapt  itself  auto- 
matically and  infallibly  to  the  requirements  of  commerce 
and  our  measure  of  value  remain  immutable." 

Cash  lays  it  down  as  a  fundamental  principle  that  "in- 
trinsically valuable  money  only  is  a  measure  of  value," 
yet  commends  a  currency  plan  that  would  either  prove  a 
flat  failure  or  drive  all  intrinsically  valuable  money  out  of 
existence.  He  prides  himself  on  ''disagreeing  with  all  the 
great  economists  of  the  world"  regarding  the  quantitive 
theory  of  money,  yet  approves  a  currency  plan  based  ex- 
clusively upon  that  theory.  The  bond-currency  plan  would 
make  our  measure  of  value  a  theoretical  dollar — purely  a 
trade  tool.  Its  value  would  not  depend  upon  cost  of  pro- 
duction but  on  utility — on  supply  relative  to  demand. 

Cash  has  something  to  say  about  "the  science  of 
money."  They  all  do.  It  is  supposed  to  be  something  very 
esoteric,  quite  beyond  the  comprehension  of  the  hoi  polloi. 
The  metalists  prattle  of  "redemption  money,"  and  "money 
of  final  payment,"  and  "gold  as  a  standard  of  value," 
until,  like  a  half-baked  sophist,  they  become  completely 
lost  in  a  fog  of  their  own  making  and  proceed  to  inflict  a 
suffering  public  with  books  filled  from  imprimus  to  finis 
with  foolish  contradictions  and  self-evident  absurdities. 
I  have  neither  space  nor  inclination  for  a  dissertation  on 
money,  but  will  drop  the  befuddled  Cash  a  line  to  enable 
him  to  find  his  way  out  of  the  labyrinth  in  which  he  is 
lost.  Should  he  inadvertently  hang  himself  with  it  after- 
ward "the  science  of  money"  will  not  have  lost  much.  A 
dollar,  whether  it  be  of  gold,  silver  or  paper,  is  simply 
a  check  which  the  people  in  their  official  capacity  gave 
against  the  entire  wealth  and  credit  of  the  nation.  Unless 
it  be  redeemed  on  demand  in  the  necessaries  or  luxuries 
of  life  it  is  absolutely  worthless.  There  can  be  no  "money 
of  final  payment."  When  you  exchange  a  paper  dollar 
for  a  gold  dollar  you  have  simply  traded  one  government 
check  for  another — the  gold  dollar  awaits  redemption  in 
commodities.  One  dollar  is  simply  a  figure  of  speech  by 
which  we  express  the  commercial  relation  which  one  com- 
modity bears  to  others.  Every  exchange  made  is  upon 
this  basis,  but  by  using  metal  as  an  exchange  medium  all 
deferred  payments  become  speculations — deals  in  futures. 
One  great  fault  of  Cash  is  jumping  at  conclusions,  sprain- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  163 

ing  his  logical  sequence  in  mid-air  and  landing  on  both 
sides  of  the  goal.  He  has  heard  that  the  "per  capita  cir- 
culation of  money  is  approximately  two  and  one-half 
times  as  much  in  France  as  it  is  in  England,  while  the 
prices  of  the  great  staples  do  not  vary  very  much  in  the 
two  countries."  That  is  what  causes  him  to  joyfully 
bestride  the  celluloid  collars  of  "all  the  great  economists 
of  the  world"  on  the  quantitive  theory  of  money.  It  is 
another  sad  illustration  of  the  axiom  that  "a  little  learn- 
ing1 is  a  dangerous  thing."  Cash  has  heard  of  improved 
machinery  in  agriculture  and  the  industrial  arts,  but  is 
evidently  not  aware  that  in  some  portions  of  the  world 
it  is  applied  to  exchange.  A  given  quantity  of  currency 
will  do  double  the  money  work, in  England  that  it  will 
in  France,  perhaps  ten  times  what  it-  will  in  China.  Ex- 
changes to  the  amount  of  hundreds  of  millions  sterling 
are  effected  without  the  handling  of  a  single  coin  or  the 
passing  of  a  pound  note.  If  we  would  abolish  our  banks 
and  clearing  houses  here  in  the  United  States  we  would 
require  a  currency  of  at  least  $250  per  capita  to  expedi- 
tiously  transact  our  present  volume  of  business.  In  every 
civilized  country  money  is  becoming  ever  less  an  ex- 
change medium,  while  retaining  its  attribute  as  a  meas- 
ure of  value.  If  we  could  so  perfect  our  exchange  system 
as  to  transact  all  our  business  without  the  use  of  money 
there  would  be  no  need  of  the  interconvertible  bond- 
currency  plan,  for  the  very  thing  at  which  it  aims — to 
take  currency  altogether  out  of  the  control  of  politicians 
and  place  it  in  the  hands  of  commerce — would  be  accom- 
plished. 

But  this  is  probably  as  large  a  lesson  as  Cash  can 
digest  in  a  single  year.  When  he  has  thoroughly  mas- 
tered it  I  will  explain  to  him,  in  words  adapted  to  his 
understanding,  that  while  the  free  and  unlimited  coinage 
of  silver  is  an  awkward  and  uncertain  step,  it  is  still  a 
step  forward ;  but  that  gold  monometalism  is  an  unequiv- 
ocal step  backward.  The  first  is  a  misdirected  blow  for 
liberty ;  the  last  a  strengthening  of  the  chains  that  bind 
America's  industrial  slaves. 


164  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

TEXAS    AND    INTOLERANCE. 
CRANFILL  SUPERSEDES  CHRIST. 

A  subscriber  at  Savannah,  Ga.,  sends  me  a  newspaper 
containing  an  account  of  the  attempt  made  by  the  min- 
isters of  Hoboken,  N.  J.,  to  prevent  Col.  Robt.  G.  Inger- 
soll  delivering  a  lecture  in  that  city,  and  asks,  "Can't  you 
touch  up  those  intolerant  Jerseyites?"  I  could,  and  it 
would  afford  me  some  satisfaction  to  do  so ;  but  it  would 
be  firing  away  ammunition  without  effect.  Professing 
Christians  who  believe  that  God  Almighty  needs  their 
guardianship — that  he  can  be  injured  by  the  ablest  agnos- 
tic on  the  earth — are  not  amenable  to  reason,  and  the 
Iconoclast  is  not  so  well  provided  with  pearls  that  it  can 
afford  to  cast  them  before  iswine.  'When  ministers 
imagine  that  the  religion  planted  by  the  toil  and  watered 
by  the  tears  of  the  Immaculate  Son  of  God  can  be  up- 
rooted by  a  single  scoffer;  that  it  cannot  stand  the  fierce 
light  which  beats  upon  Reason's  forum  and  defy  all  the 
ballistae  and  battering-rams  of  human  logic ;  that  it  must 
be  sheltered  from  the  puny  attacks  of  mortal  men  lest 
they  prove  it  a  fraud  and  make  it  a  by-word  and  a  shaking 
of  the  head  to  the  nations,  their  faith  must  be  wofully 
weak  or  their  lives  a  brazen  fraud.  Truth  does  not  hide 
away  in  dark  corners,  but  seeks  the  garish  light  of  the 
noonday  sun.  It  does  not  fear  the  attacks  of  Falsehood, 
but  stands  ever  in  the  world's  arena,  courting  the  con- 
flict. The  Christian  religion  is  true  or  it  is  false.  It  is  of 
God  or  it  is  of  the  devil.  If  true  it  will  stand  the  severest 
test.  If  of  God  it  is  indestructible  as  the  law  of  gravita- 
tion. Then  why  do  its  ordained  defenders  take  refuge 
behind  long  forgotten  laws  born  of  brutish  ignorance, 
and  with  the  policeman's  bludgeon  strive  to  close  the 
mouth  of  honest  criticism?  The  poet  assures  us  that 
"Thrice  armed  is  he  who  hath  his  quarrel  just" ;  yet  the 
leaders  of  the  armies  of  the  Lord  will  not  fight,  even  on 
compulsion.  Instead  of  meeting  logic  with  logic  and  the 
fallible  reason  of  man  with  the  authoritative  decrees  of 
God,  they  answer  every  attack  of  infidelity  with  a  tirade 
of  foul  calumny,  then  appeal  to  the  laws  of  the  land  to 
protect  them  in  their  pitiful  weakness.  They  shriek  "in- 
fidel" when  it  was  infidels  whom  Christ  toiled  and  suf- 
fered to  save.  They  howl  "blasphemer,"  when  their  great 
Master  forgave  even  those  who  nailed  him  to  the  cross 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  165 

and  mocked  his  agonies.  The  tactics  adopted  by  the 
church  to  crush  those  who  presume  to  question  or  dare 
to  differ  is  making  infidels  by  the  million.  The  day  has 
gone  by  when  men  of  intelligence  were  content  to  close 
their  eyes,  open  their  mouths  and  swallow  without  ques- 
tion every  foolish  assertion  of  clerical  fatheads.  Formerly 
they  builded  their  Reason  on  their  Faith;  now  they  are 
grounding  their  Faith  upon  their  Reason — that  infinitesi- 
mal fragment  of  Godhood  which  burns,  more  or  less 
brightly,  in  every  human  brain.  They  are  demanding 
that  the  Christian  religion  be  cast  into  the  crucible  where 
every  assumption  of  science  is  tried  by  fire,  and  either 
comes  forth  in  deathless  splendor  or  is  relegated  to  the 
rubbish  heap. 

Yes,  it  were  a  real  comfort  to  "touch  up  those  intolerant 
Jerseyites" ;  but  my  correspondent  must  excuse  me. 
There's  an  old  adage  to  the  effect  that  those  who  live  in 
glass  houses  should  not  throw  stones — and  Texas  can 
furnish  forth  more  hidebound  dogmatists,  narrow-brained 
bigots  and  intolerant  fanatics  in  proportion  to  population 
than  can  any  other  section  of  these  United  States.  That 
is  why  the  Iconoclast  located  in  Texas.  It  came,  not  to 
call  the  righteous,  but  sinners  -to  repentance.  When  it 
has  thoroughly  reformed  the  Texas  ministry  it  will  be 
time  enough  for  it  to  tackle  that  of  other  States.  We  are 
somewhat  inclined  to  sneer  at  the  old-time  Puritans  of 
New  England  and  the  exuberant  cranks  of  Kansas.  Ever 
and  anon  some  able  editor  mounts  to  the  roof  garden  of 
his  donjon  keep  and  thanks  God  that  we  are  not  as  other 
people ;  but  the  cold  hard  fact  remains  that  Massachusetts 
and  Kansas  combined  cannot  furnish  so  large  a  contin- 
gent whom  it  were  unsafe  to  trust  with  power  to  perse- 
cute for  religious  opinion's  sake.  Of  course  Texas  has 
many  as  broad-gauged  and  progressive  people  as  any  land 
or  clime  can  boast ;  but  she  is  cursed  with  a  grand  army  of 
Me-and-god  creatures  of  the  Cranfillian  type,  who  would, 
if  invested  with  plenary  power,  establish  a  strict  censor- 
ship of  the  press  and  permit  nothing  to  be  published  that 
was  not  considered  ultra-orthodox — that  did  not  begin 
with  hypocritical  groans  and  end  with  blasphemous 
"amens";  who  would  require  Jews  and  Catholics  to 
recant  on  pain  of  death  and  place  heretics  under  harrows 
of  iron.  In  most  States  the  church  has  made  grand  prog- 
ress, broadened,  become  more  tolerant,  more  Christ-like 
— calling  science,  art  and  education  to  its  aid  while  cast- 
ing non-essentials  aside ;  has  realized  that 


166  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

"New   occasions   teach   new   duties, 

Time  makes  ancient  good  uncouth ; 
They  must  upward  still  and  onward 
Who  would  keep  abreast  of  truth." 

But  the  Texas  division  seems  to  have  become  hopelessly 
stuck  in  the  Serbonian  bogs  of  a  brainless  bigotry.  It  is 
not  content  to  care  for  the  spiritual  welfare  of  man,  but 
insists  upon  usurping  the  functions  of  the  State  and  pro- 
viding for  his  temporal  well-being  also.  It  would  make 
him  devout,  not  by  God's  love,  but  by  due  process  of  law. 
Having  made  it  a  criminal  offense  for  him  to  pursue  his 
usual  vocation  on  Emperor  Constantine's  "holy  Sabbath, " 
it  now  aspires  to  close  all  fairs  and  other  places  of  in- 
struction on  that  day,  and  we  may  soon  expect  it  to  send 
a  constable  after  those  who  fail  to  attend  divine  service 
and  cannot  furnish  a  doctor's  certificate  of  inability  so  to 
do.  It  has  banded  itself  together  in  a  political  party  with 
the  avowed  purpose  of  dictating;  what  man  shall  drink, 
and  will  doubtless  next  prescribe  the  cut  of  his  clothing 
and  limits  his  library  to  Slattery's  and  Sam  Jones'  ser- 
mons, a  Protestant  Bible  and  the  "Baptist  Standard." 
And  the  most  remarkable  phase  of  it  all  is  that  Cranfill 
has  become  infinitely  more  sacred  than  Christ,  the  politi- 
cal tenets  of  the  church  militant  holier  than  the  Ten 
Commandments.  You  may  declare  the  Garden  of  Eden 
episode  a  myth,  and  even  hint  that  the  Immaculate  Con- 
ception is  but  an  old  pagan  legend  in  a  new  dress,  and 
be  allowed  to  live ;  but  one  doubt  regarding  the  efficiency 
of  Prohibition  were  sufficient  to  damn  you,  while  to  sug- 
gest that  either  Cranfill,  Jones  or  Slattery  are  out  for  the 
long  green  and  have  as  little  religion  as  a  rabbit,  were 
rankest  blasphemy — a  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost. 

Fortunately  the  liberal  element  dominates  in  Texas,  as 
it  does  in  every  civilized  country,  and  the  fiendish  wolf 
of  fanaticism  can  only  tug  at  its  chain  and  show  its 
venomous  teeth.  Not  being  permitted  to  put  men  and 
women  to  the  torture  for  uttering  their  honest  convic- 
tions in  a  land  of  so-called  religious  liberty;  to  flay  them 
alive  for  daring  to  dissent  from  some  ridiculous  dogma 
cooked  up  by  half-crazed  dunderheads  during  the  Dark 
Ages;  to  drag  them  at  the  cart's  tail  and  bore  their 
tongues  with  hot  irons  in  the  name  of  a  beneficent  Deity, 
these  professed  followers  of  the  Man  of  Galilee  resort 
to  sneaking  boycotts,  petty  annoyances  and  cowardly 
calumnies.  They  prove  in  every  way  possible  that  their 
hearts,  instead  of  being  full  to  overflowing  with  the  grace 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  167 

of  God  and  the  catholic  charity  of  Christ,  are  bitter  little 
pools  in  whose  poisonous  waters  and  fetid  scum  writhe 
and  wriggle  unclean  reptiles  such  as  Dante  saw  int  the 
desolate  regions  of  the  damned.  That  the  picture  is  not 
overdrawn  every  one  who  has  chanced  to  provoke  the 
ire  of  the  ultra-religious  element  of  Texas  knows  too 
well.  It  were  equivalent  to  invading  a  den  of  rattlesnakes 
or  stirring  up  a  rabid  skunk.  Tom  Paine  was  a  devout 
Deist.  At  the  shrine  of  the  Most  High  God  he  humbly 
bowed  the  knee.  He  never  penned  an  irreligious  line  nor 
uttered  an  immoral  sentiment.  He  was  an  intellectual 
Colossus,  towering  head  and  shoulders  above  even  the 
Titans  of  his  time.  He  was  the  unfaltering  champion  of 
freedom,  the  guide,  philosopher^  and  friend  of  the  new- 
born nation.  But  for  his  fearless  pen,  whose  path  of  fire 
led  on  to  liberty,  the  sword  of  Washington  might  have 
slumbered  in  its  sheath.  Paine  did  more  than  all  the 
preachers  of  his  day  to  nerve  the  eagle's  wing  for  its 
imperial  flight — to  fling  Freedom's  banner,  like  a  burst  of 
glory,  into  the  leaden  sky.  But  he  chanced  to  disagree 
with  the  orthodoxy  of  his  day,  and  for  a  hundred  years 
he  has  been  denounced  and  damned  as  an  enemy  of  God 
and  a  curse  to  mankind.  Even  his  dying  bed  has  been 
heaped  with  brutal  lies,  and  across  his  grave  still  beat  and 
break  the  accursed  waves  of  "Christian"  calumny.  In 
many  portions  of  the  country  the  church  has  ceased  to 
belittle  and  belie  Tom  Paine ;  but  the  ultra-orthodox  of 
Texas  still  insist  that  he  was  an  atheist  and  an  outlaw 
who  repented  of  his  foul  crimes  too  late  to  escape  the 
horrors  of  hell. 

The  New  England  Puritans  who  hanged  witches  and 
persecuted  Quakers  felt  that  they  were  discharging  a  disa- 
greeable duty.  They  were  the  creatures  of  an  ignorant  and 
superstitious  but  God-fearing  age,  and  their  cruelties,  which 
have  left  so  dark  a  stain  upon  the  annals  of  the  Christian 
church,  were  performed  more  in  sorrow  than  in  anger.  If 
they  inflicted  tortures  in  the  name  of  religion  they  were  will- 
ing to  suffer  death  in  its  most  terrible  form  in  defence  of 
their  faith.  With  them  religion  was  a  serious  thing  and 
morality  its  synonym.  If  ignorant  they  were  honest,  and 
if  brutal  they  "were  brave.  They  despised  the  rewards  of 
this  world,  trampled  its  frivolities  beneath  their  iron-shod 
feet,  loved  God  with  their  whole  hearts  and  hated  a  liar  and 
a  hypocrite  as  they  did  the  imps  of  hell.  How  is  it  with 
the  Texas  intolerants?  Instead  of  fixing  their  eyes  stead- 
fastly upon  the  Kingdom  of  God,  they  are  the  most  per- 


168  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

sistent  seekers  after  the  almighty  dollar,  the  most  eager  for 
social  preferment  and  political  advancement  of 'any  class  in 
the  commonwealth.  They  will  give  blows,  but  will  not 
stand  to  receive  them,  and  instead  of  regarding  with  kingly 
contempt  that  man  who  would  swerve  one  iota  from  the 
truth  to  preserve  his  life,  they  have  made  of  lying  a  power- 
ful lever  "with  which  they  hope  to  overthrow  religious  liber- 
ty, transform  the  state  into  a  theocracy  and  force  free-born 
American  citizens  to  submit  to  the  petty  slavery  of  sumptu- 
ary laws.  Their  preachers,  instead  of  serving  without 
salary  and  looking  forward  to  a  heavenly  reward  as  did  the 
Apostles,  are  ever  seeking  "calls"  to  fatter  financial  pas- 
tures. When  the  legislature  is  to  select  a  brace  of  chaplains 
to  insult  Almighty  God  with  perfunctory  prayers — paid  for 
at  the  rate  of  $5  a  minute  by  men  glad  of  an  opportunity  to 
earn  a  dollar  a  day — there's  a  wild  rush  of  the  sanctified 
time-servers  to  the  capital  city,  and  the  methods  they  adopt 
to  corral  the  succulent  sinecure  would  disgrace  a  railroad 
lobby  or  cause  a  bunco-steerer  to  blush.  They  have  di- 
vorced morality  from  religion  and  substituted  unadulterated 
gall  for  the  fear  of  God.  Had  the  religious  fervor  of  the 
Puritans  dominated  the  world  we  would  have  had  men  of 
mistaken  methods  but  of  iron  mould ;  should  the  fashionable 
politico-religiosity  of  Texas  prevail  we  would  have,  to  bor- 
row from  Macaulay,  "the  days  of  dwarfish  talents  and 
gigantic  vices,  the  paradise  of  cold  hearts  and  narrow  minds, 
the  golden  age  of  the  coward,  the  bigot  and  the  slave." 

Unquestionably  there  are  many  worthy  church  commu- 
nicants in  Texas,  as  elsewhere;  but  they  appear  to  be  in  a 
hopeless  minority — a  few  grains  of  sound  corn  in  a  pile  of 
compost.  There  are  broad-gauged  men  in  the  Protestant 
ministry  here — men  who  serve  the  Lord  in  spirit  and  in 
truth,  and  by  their  kindly  acts,  progressive  ideas  and  noble 
tolerance  dignify  his  cause;  but  they  are  the  exception  in- 
stead of  the  rule  and  are  almost  invariably  unpopular  with 
the  great  body  of  church  communicants,  whose  ideal  ap- 
pears to  be  a  preacher  "with  just  ability  enough  to  deceive 
and  just  religion  enough  to  persecute."  During  the  recent 
Prohibition  campaign  in  McLennan  county  a  minister  of  the 
gospel,  believing  sumptuary  laws  violative  both  of  the  spirit 
of  the  Christian  Bible  and  the  American  constitution,  spoke 
and  worked  against  it.  What  happened?  Did  a  commit- 
tee of  his  brethren  in  Christ  wait  upon  him  and  strive  by 
kindly  argument  to  convince  him  that  he  was  wrong?  Did 
the  other  preachers  offer  up  public  prayers  that  he  be 
brought  within  the  pale  of  their  political  party?  Not  a  bit 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  169 

of  it.  They  poured  out  upon  him  the  seven  vials  of  their 
wrath — attacked  him  with  the  vindictive  hatred  of  a  pack  of 
demons  torturing  a  lost  soul,  or  a  drove  of  mangy  jackasses 
kicking  a  dead  lion.  They  belabored  him  from  the  pulpit 
and  the  rostrum,  and  turned  the  sectarian  press  into  a  reek- 
ing sewer  that  emptied  upon  him  the  foulest  filth.  These 
"Christians,"  these  professed  followers  of  the  meek  and 
lowly  Nazarene,  who  was  all  love  and  charity  and  gentle- 
ness, reached  for  his  vitals  with  beaks  and  claws  like  fam- 
ished vultures,  then  served  him  as  the  unclean  Yahoos  did 
the  hapless  Gulliver  when  they  found  him  beneath  their 
roost  in  Houyhnhnm  land.  And  so  they  serve  every  man 
who  declines  to  permit  them  to  do  both  his  religious  and 
political  thinking  for  him ;  who  refuses  to  take  his  place 
among  the  intellectual  goslings  and  trail  blindly  in  the  wake 
of  some  flat-headed  old  ministerial  gander,  squawking  when 
he  squawks  and  fluttering  when  he  flies.  There  are  min- 
isters occupying  prominent  Texas  pulpits  who  haven't  orig- 
inated an  idea  in  forty  years,  and  who  would  not  recognize 
the  Incarnate  Son  of  God  if  they  met  him  in  the  road.  It  is 
not  necessary  that  a  man  should  possess  an  iota  of  intellect 
to  become  a  popular  preacher.  In  fact,  brains  are  but  in 
his  way,  for  in  orthodoxy  there  is  absolutely  no  room  for 
reason.  He  needs  only  to  become  a  prohibitionist — not  nec- 
essarily a  teetotaler — cultivate  a  sanctified  whine  calculated 
to  curdle  milk,  grab  the  crank  of  some  pitiful  little  gospel 
mill  and  begin  to  grind.  Let  him  but  select  the  heavenly 
turnpike  on  which  he  suspects  there  will  be  the  most  travel, 
set  up  his  little  toll-gate,  do  the  Jeremiah  act  and  he'll  soon 
have  a  mob  of  sanctified  nonentities  about  him  who  shame 
the  devil  at  his  own  game  on  week-days  and  try  to  bunco 
the  blessed  Saviour  on  Sunday.  I  have  noticed  that  those 
who  were  most  fearful  that  I  would  commit  the  awful  sin 
of  blasphemy,  or  "desecrate  the  Christian  Sabbath"  by  play- 
ing ball  with  the  boys  or  dancing  with  the  girls  were  the 
people  I  had  to  watch  closest  in  a  trade;  but  those  who  sat 
up  nights  to  agonize  lest  the  young  be  led  astray  by  some 
awful  atheist,  could  tell  the  smoothest  falsehood  with  the 
straightest  face ;  that  those  who  wept  the  most  copiously  be- 
cause the  heathen  of  foreign  lands  had  no  Bible,  were  a 
trifle  backward  in  supplying  the  heathen  right  here  at  home 
with  bread;  that  those  who  cried  "awmen"  the  loudest  at 
camp-meetings  were  usually  expert  circulators  of  calumnies. 
If  we  could  trade  our  ham-fat  preachers  for  Good  Samari- 
tans at  a  ratio  of  16  to  I,  our  brass-collar  orthodoxy  for 
pure  morality,  and  about  three  hundred  thousand  brainless 


170  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

bigots  and  canting  hypocrites  for  a  yaller  dog  and  lose  him, 
Texas  would  be  infinitely  better  off. 


A    DAMNABLE   DECISION. 

The  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  in  the  income-tax 
case  has  placed  this  nation  twenty  years  nearer  a  revolu- 
tion that  may  terminate  in  a  Reign  of  Terror.  It  has 
issued  to  the  plutocrat  a  patent  of  nobility — declared  that  he 
belongs  to  a  privileged  class  in  nowise  amenable  to  the 
laws  that  govern  the  proletarian.  It  has  erected  a  barrier 
between  Dives  and  Lazarus,  drawn  the  line  of  battle  be- 
tween the  Cormorant  and  the  Commune.  It  has  trans- 
formed the  Federal  Constitution  from  a  palladium  of  liberty 
into  an  instrument  of  oppression,  the  tool  of  tyranny.  That 
decision  is  a  challenge  to  destiny,  a  red  blanket  in  the  face 
of  an  infuriated  bull,  a  mockery  of  Samson  by  foolish 
Philistines  as  he  stands,  blind  and  desperate,  his  brawny 
arms  encircling  the  pillars  of  our  political  temple.  It  is  a 
crime  against  the  common  people,  a  poisoned  dirk  driven 
into  the  very  vitals  of  the  American  Republic,  a  foul  blas- 
phemy of  Liberty,  Equality  and  Fraternity,  the  terrestrial 
Trinity  of  our  fathers. 

Doubtless  the  occupants  of  the  Supreme  Bench  resemble 
Brutus  in  that  they  are  "all  honorable  men ;"  but  if  such  a 
halting,  illogical  and  every  way  infamous  verdict  had  been 
brought  in  by  a  petit  jury  there  would  have  been  more  than 
a  suspicion  of  bribery.  The  decision  as  handed  down  by 
Chief  Justice  Fuller  reads  like  the  special  pleading  of  a  jack- 
leg  lawyer,  employed  to  defend  a  rich  but  notorious  robber 
caught  despoiling  the  pantries  of  the  poor.  Talleyrand  de- 
clares that  language  was  made  to  conceal  thought ;  but  even 
the  opaque  verbal  flood  in  which  the  decision  floats  like  a 
grisly  skeleton  in  a  sea  of  slime,  cannot  conceal  the  fact  that 
Fuller  knew  the  ruling  was  both  dangerous  and  damnable. 
Like  the  lady  in  the  play,  he  doth  protest  too  much — con- 
sumes an  hour  in  a  dismal  failure  to  establish  a  radical  dif- 
ference between  tweedledum  and  tweedledee.  It  reminds 
one  of  the  plea  of  Queen  Elizabeth  that  she  possessed  a 
cavalry  regiment  of  which  neither  horse  nor  man  could  be 
hurt,  viz.,  a  regiment  of  tailors  on  mares.  He  is  too  evi- 
dently arguing  to  his  own  conscience,  which,  like  the  dead 
Banquo,  will  not  down. 

The  four  dissenting  justices  did  not  accuse  their  asso- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  171 

ciates  of  corruption ;  but  they  did  charge  them  with  having 
committed  a  crime — with  having  instituted  a  despotism  of 
wealth,  with  having  deliberately  endangered  the  existence 
of  the  American  government  by  an  abortive  science  of  defi- 
nition. Never  before  in  the  history  of  the  Supreme  Court 
did  the  dissenting  justices  express  such  indignation  over  a 
decision  or  intimate  so  plainly  that  their  associates  were 
either  fools  or  knaves.  The  vigorous,  almost  insulting 
protests  of  the  dissenting  justices;  the  tremendous  mone- 
tary interests  at  stake,  together  with  the  scholastic  hair- 
splittings, argumentative  writhing  and  illogical  twistings 
and  turnings  that  distinguish  the  decision,  may  mean  much 
or  little  according  to  the  strength  of  the  critic's  confidence 
in  the  incorruptibility  of  the  court.  For  my  own  part,  1 
do  not  believe  that  the  betrayal  of  the  people  was  the  result 
of  direct  bribery,  as  in  the  case  of  Benedict  Arnold ;  but  I 
do  believe  that  such  pressure  was  brought  to  bear  by  the 
plutocracy  upon  our  court  of  last  resort  as  to  shamefully  de- 
feat the  ends  of  justice.  All  men  are  more  or  less  malle- 
able, and  several  members  of  our  Supreme  Court  excep- 
tionably  so — veritable  Trilbys  in  pants,  who  find  it  "difficult 
to  say  nay  to  earnest  pleadings." 

The  decision  is  simply  an  official  notification  that  upon 
the  shoulders  of  the  poor  must  continue  to  rest  the  burthen 
of  taxation.  The  court  decided,  by  a  vote  of  5  to  4,  that  a 
tax  on  income  arising  from  interest  or  rent  is  ''direct,"  there- 
fore unconstitutional  unless  apportioned  among  the  several 
states  on  a  basis  of  population;  while  a  tax  on  income  de- 
rived from  labor,  professional  service  or  merchandizing  is 
"indirect"  and  may  be  imposed  at  the  pleasure  of  Congress 
and  without  apportionment.  The  gross  injustice  of  such 
a  ruling  is  too  palpable  to  require  comment,  while  its  utter 
absurdity  must  be  evident  to  every  man  capable  of  reason- 
ing from  a  premise  to  the  simplest  conclusion.  A  has  an 
annual  income  of  $1,000,000,  derived  from  the  rental  of  real 
estate  or  interest  on  capital  invested  in  securities ;  B  has  an 
income  of  $1000,  derived  from  the  occupation  of  merchant 
or  machinist,  butcher  or  baker.  Congress,  according  to 
the  Supreme  Court,  may,  by  a  simple  "Be  it  enacted,"  tax 
the  petty  income  of  B,  but  is  forbidden  to  touch  the  colossal 
income  of  A,  except  by  apportionment,  when  it  becomes  the 
province  of  each  State  to  say  how  its  pro  rata  shall  be  pro- 
vided. A  tax  on  the  individual  earnings  of  B  is  "indirect," 
while  a  tax  on  the  revenues  of  A,  drawn  second-hand  from 
the  efforts  of  others,  is  "direct" — perhaps  on  the  theory 
that  "two  negatives  make  a  positive."  The  Federal  gov- 


172  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

ernment  can  shove  its  hand  as  deeply  as  it  likes  into  the 
pocket  of  labor,  but  cannot  touch  one  penny  in  the  thousand 
pounds  in  the  overflowing  coffers  of  the  capitalist.  So 
says  the  court.  How  is  that  for  the  fundamental  law  of 
a  land  that  poses  in  the  face  of  heaven  as  "the  refuge  of 
the  world's  oppressed?" 

And  what  is  the  reply  to  this  complaint?  "Apportion- 
ment." Apportion  hell — between  the  West  and  South! 
Justice  Harlan  truly  says  that  "No  such  apportionment  can 
possibly  be  made  without  doing  monstrous,  wicked  injustice 
to  the  many  for  the  benefit  of  the  favored  few  in  particular 
States."  Do  those  "able  editors,"  short-horse  politicians 
and  other  intellectual  animaculae  now  echoing  the  word 
like  lost  burros  braying  for  company,  know  what  constitu- 
tional apportionment  of  the  public  burden  means?  It 
means  that  when  the  Federal  government  desires  to  raise  a 
sum  of  money  by  such  method  each  State  must  contribute 
thereto,  not  in  proportion  to  its  taxable  wealth,  but  accord- 
ing to  its  population,  no  matter  how  poverty-stricken  its 
people.  It  means  that  one  state  must  put  up  as  much  for 
a  mechanic  out  of  employment,  or  a  farmer  with  a  mort- 
gaged crop,  as  another  for  a  Rockefeller  or  a  Gould.  The 
privilege  of  taxing  the  great  incomes  by  the  method  of  ap- 
portionment simply  means  that  labor  is  at  perfect  liberty  to 
bite  off  its  nose  to  spite  its  face,  then  leap  from  the  frying 
pan  into  the  fire.  No  political  party  will  ever  dare  per- 
petrate such  an  infamy  as  the  apportionment  of  the  income 
tax.  Not  even  the  Supreme  Court — that  pitiful  cat's-paw 
of  the  plutocracy — had  the  audacity  to  indorse  it. 

While  a  portion  of  the  law  was  declared  constitutional,  it 
was  all  killed — the  tail  was  permitted  to  go  with  the  hide. 
The  law  was  aimed  at  large  incomes,  many  of  which  are 
drawn  neither  from  rent  nor  interest;  but  the  court  denied 
the  axiom  that  "half  a  loaf  is  better  than  no  bread."  It 
practically  decided  that  should  the  government  draft  two 
men  for  war,  and  one  escape,  it  would  hasten  to  discharge 
the  other,  instead  of  mustering  him  in  and  sending  a  ser- 
geant after  the  runaway.  The  decision  means  that  we  can- 
not compel  men  to  contribute  to  the  support  of  government 
according  to  their  means  until  we  have  a  constitution  which 
the  plutocrat,  with  friends  at  court,  cannot  possibly  pervert 
— or  the  people  decide  that  patience  has  ceased  to  be  a 
virtue.  It  means  that  Wealth  has  decreed  that  Consump- 
tion- shall  bear  the  burden — that  tariff  reform  and  reduced 
excises  are,  for  the  present  at  least,  "an  irridescent  dream." 
It  means  that  no  matter  how  imminent  the  peril  of  the  gov- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  173 

ernment,  or  pressing  its  need,  it  is  powerless  to  compel  the 
plutocrat  to  contribute  of  his  means  to  the  defense  of  our 
flag.  It  means,  as  Justice  Brown  expressed  it,  "The  sub- 
mergence of  the  liberties  of  the  people  in  a  sordid  despotism 
of  wealth."  It  means  that  the  people  who  have  ever  looked 
to  the  Supreme  Court  for  protection  from  outrage  and 
oppression,  will  henceforth  regard  it  as  the  slave  of  their 
enemies.  It  means  general  dissatisfaction  and  growing  un- 
rest, until,  despairing  of  righting  his  wrongs  in  the  name  of 
reason,  the  Titan  will  put  forth  his  terrible  strength,  and  the 
government  of  the  United  States  of  America  will  thence- 
forth live  "only  in  the  tomb  of  the  world's  history." 


A  BIBLICAL  BEAR  STORY. 

The  Bible  is  fruitful  of  snake  and  fish  stories,  replete  with 
dreadful  tales  of  ghosts  and  goblins,  giants  and  chimerae 
dire;  but  no  biblical  narrative  possessed  for  my  childhood 
such  absorbing  interest  as  that  of  Elisha  and  his  brace  of 
anthropophagous  bears.  In  early  youth,  as  in  later  years, 
I  resembled  the  Lord  in  that  I  was  no  respecter  of  persons. 
There  may  have  been  other  points  of  resemblance,  but  they 
were  not  sufficiently  pronounced  to  excite  remark.  I  had  a 
bad  habit  of  giving  "back  talk"  to  my  elders,  believing  that 
youth  has  some  rights  which  even  age  is  bound  to  respect; 
hence  I  was  frequently  warned  to  beware  the  sad  fate  of 
those  bad  little  boys  who  made  ribald  remarks  anent  Elisha  Js 
seldom  hair. 

This  interesting  animal  appears  to  have  long  been 
Elijah's  under-study,  his  man  Friday,  so  to  speak.  Like 
Mary  and  her  little  lamb,  everywhere  that  Elijah  went 
Elisha  was  sure  to  go.  He  stuck  to  him  like  a  cockle-burr 
to  a  merino  buck,  or  an  importunate  creditor  to  a  bankrupt. 
I  rather  suspect  that  Elijah  went  on  that  celestial  excursion 
to  get  rid  of  him.  I  think  that  I  would  have  ridden  in  a 
chariot  of  fire,  or  even  straddled  a  streak  of  lightning  to 
cut  such  bad  company.  Elijah  tried  to  side-track  his 
prophetic  shadow  at  Gilgal,  but  it  was  no  go.  Elisha 
trotted  along  to  Beth-el — wherever  that  may  be — to  Jericho 
and  beyond  the  Jordan,  despite  the  express  orders  of  his 
master,  much  as  a  persistent  pup  trails  its  expostulating 
human  property,  but  whether  for  genuine  love  of  Elijah,  or 
to  appropriate  his  garments  when  the  latter  put  on  celestial 
raiment,  deponent  saith  not.  He  got  his  master's  mantle 


174  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

when  the  latter  was  swiped  by  a  marauding-  whirlwind,  and 
seems  to  have  been  well  content, — to  have  shed  no  tears 
over  the  enforced  absence  of  its  former  occupant.  Several 
other  people  who  witnessed  the  ascension  were  quite  sure 
that  Elijah  was  the  victim  of  an  infant  cyclone  and  insisted 
on  searching  for  the  body,  but  to  this  Elisha  strenuously  ob- 
jected. He  may  have  considered  it  wasted  effort;  and, 
again,  he  may  have  feared  that  it  would  endanger  his  story 
anent  that  chariot  of  fire — which  had  inadvertently  escaped 
the  notice  of  the  other  eye-witnesses. 

Having  parted  the  river  Jordan  with  his  second-hand 
mantle — the  waters  fleeing  affrighted  from  the  unusual  vis- 
itor— he  was  accepted  by  the  simple  people  of  Jericho  as 
Elijah's  legitimate  successor  and  honored  accordingly.  He 
had  tramped  so  long,  however,  that  the  spirit  of  the  pro- 
fessional hobo  as  well  as  the  spirit  of  prophesy  was  upon 
him,  and  he  longed  to  be  jogging  along  the  dusty  lanes  and 
foraging  his  fodder,  so  he  set  out  for  Beth-el  afoot.  He 
does  not  appear  to  have  had  any  business  in  Beth-el,  but 
that  was  all  the  more  reason  why  the  old  vagabond  should 
go  there.  The  prophets  of  his  time  were  not  in  the  habit 
of  tarrying  very  long  in  one  place,  but  kept  swinging  round 
the  circle  and  living  on  the  country,  much  like  the  modern 
evangelists. 

The  children  of  Jericho  appear  to  have  resembled  the 
Nineteenth  century  youngsters  in  their  unappeasable  ap- 
petite for  fireworks.  They  had  heard  about  Elijah  going 
up  like  a  Fourth  of  July  rocket,  but  had  not  been  permitted 
to  witness  the  pyrotechnic  display.  They  knew  that  Elisha 
had  fallen  heir  to  the  business  and  raiment  of  the  original 
aeronaut,  and  naturally  watched  him  with  considerable  in- 
terest, fully  expecting  that  he  would  eventually  take  a 
header  into  the  blue  empyrean  with  a  pair  of  flaming  horses, 
scattering  a  stream  of  sparks  behind  them.  But  Elisha 
has  packed  his  red  bandana  and  is  leaving  the  city — they  are 
about  to  be  disappointed.  They  cannot  surrender  the  long 
anticipated  circus  without  a  protest,  at  least  an  appeal,  so 
they  follow  him  beyond  the  gates  of  the  city,  crying  in 
their  shrill  treble. 

"Go  up,  thou  old  baldhead !     Go  up,  thou  old  baldhead !" 

They  doubtless  do  not  mean  to  be  disrespectful,  but  are 
dreadfully  eager  to  see  the  show.  They  have  discussed  it 
and  dreamed  of  it  for  many  days, — have  trailed  every  little 
whirlwind  to  see  if  it  was  hunting  for  Elisha  and  scrutinized 
each  horse  headed  in  his  direction,  to  see  if  it  was  on  fire. 
They  have  heard  that  Elijah  went  out  into  the  wilderness 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST.  175 

beyond  Jordan  to  make  his  ascent  instead  of  doing  the 
aeronautic  act  from  the  market-place  and  getting  all  the 
caravans  to  give  excursion  rates,  and  they  suspect  that 
Elisha  is  sneaking  out  to  board  a  whirlwind  at  some  obscure 
way-station.  What  wonder  that  they  grow  clamorous  and 
cry: 

"Go  up,  thou  old  baldhead !" 

But  the  duly  ordained  prophet  of  God  does  not  take  the 
curtain  calls  of  the  gallery  in  a  kindly  spirit.  He  is  evi- 
dently sensitive  about  his  scarcity  of  hair  and  considers  their 
remarks  not  only  an  affront  to  his  dignity  but  an  insult  to 
the  Deity.  Perhaps  while  dozing  at  the  town  pump  the 
godless  gamins  had  painted  a  face  on  the  rear  elevation  of 
his  cranium,  so  that  it  was  difficult  for  people  to  determine 
in  what  direction  the  prophet  was  steering.  Or  the  ped- 
dlers of  hair  rejuvenators  may  have  persecuted  him  until 
his  naturally  sunny  disposition  had  soured.  Anyway,  the 
allusion  to  his  opera  bouffe  certificate  was  too  much  for  his 
Christian  charity.  Instead  of  gathering  the  little  gamins 
about  him  and  explaining  the  significance  of  Elijah's  trans- 
lation, instructing  them  to  lead  worthy  lives  and  thereby 
become  an  honor  to  their  parents  and  a  blessing  to  the 
world ;  instead  of  carrying  with  him  to  Beth-el  the  love  and 
best  wishes  of  the  little  ones  and  praying  God  to  protect 
them  from  evil; — 

"He  turned  back  and  looked  on  them,  and  cursed  them 
in  the  name  of  the  Lord.  And  there  came  forth  two  she- 
bears  out  of  the  wood  and  tare  forty  and  two'  children  of 
them." 

Then  Elisha  continued  on  his  mission  of  love,  recking 
not  the  blood  of  the  butchered  babes — left  the  poor  little 
bodies  for  the  bears  and  buzzards.  Forty  and  two  little 
children  lie  torn  and  mangled  in  the  wild-wood,  their  white 
faces  upturned  to  an  angry  God.  There  is  woe  and  wail 
in  Jericho  as  the  sun  goes  down  that  day,  mothers  weeping 
for  their  children  and  refusing  to  be  comforted  because  they 
are  not :  men  who  have  led  the  forlorn  hope  and  looked  un- 
awed  into  the  lion's  angry  eyes,  are  prostrate  in  the  dust, 
bewailing  their  first  born ;  the  Lord  of  the  universe  is  brand- 
ed as  a  bloodthirsty  beast,  whose  company  a  self-respecting 
devil  would  decline  to  keep,  but  the  bald  head  of  Israel's 
peripatetic  prophet  is  avenged! 

I  sincerely  trust  that  I  will  not  be  burned  as  a  heretic,  or 
even  expelled  from  the  church  if  I  declare  my  doubts  anent 
the  Rev.  Mr.  Elisha's  bear  story.  It  is  just  possible  that 
such  a  personage  existed ;  tho'  there  does  not  appear  to  have 


176  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

been  any  necessity  for  his  creation.  It  is  conceivable  that 
the  gamins  of  Jericho  regarded  him  as  a  harmless  half-wit 
hobo,  used  him  for  their  support  until  they  got  him  "raw." 
It  may  be  that  while  they  were  plaguing  him  a  brace  of 
ravenous  bears  set  upon  them.  I  can  scarce  blame  the 
prowlers  for  preferring  the  tender  children  to  the  tough  old 
prophet;  still  I  regret  that  they  didn't  dally  with  him  long 
enough  to  abate  the  insufferable  nuisance.  Elisha's  bear 
story  is  one  of  those  barbarisms  which  I  shall  cut  out  of  the 
Bible  when  I  re-write  it,  as  I  intend  one  of  these  days  to  do. 
It  is  not  only  a  criminal  libel  of  the  Creator,  but  an  insult  to 
common  sense. 


BEAUTY  AND  THE  BEAST. 
OR  THE  LADIES  AND  THE  APOSTLE. 

[A  synopsis  of  Mr.  Brann's  address  to  the  Ladies'  Reading  Club, 
San  Antonio,  Texas.] 

I  have  been  asked  to  lecture  to  the  ladies  of  the  Reading 
Club,  but  shall  do  nothing  of  the  kind.  That  were  to  admit 
that  you  require  improvement,  and  I  would  not  have  you 
better  than  you  are.  We  would  have  to  clip  your  wings 
or  keep  you  in  a  cage.  Besides,  I  never  saw  a  woman 
whom  I  could  teach  anything — she  already  knew  it.  I  have 
been  going  to  school  to  the  ladies  all  my  life.  My  mother 
carried  me  through  the  kindergarten,  lady  preceptors 
through  the  intermediate  grade,  and  my  wife  is  patiently 
rounding  off  my  education.  When  I  graduate  I  expect  ^to 
go  direct  to  heaven.  As  near  as  I  can  figure  it  out,  the  in- 
habitants of  the  New  Jerusalem  will  consist  of  several  mil- 
lion women — and  just  men  enough  to  fill  the  municipal 
offices. 

"I  would  not  live  always,  I  ask  not  to  stay." 

No  lecture  then,  but  an  informal  talk,  without  text  or  sub- 
ject— a  vagrant  ramble  thro'  such  fields  as  tempt  us.  If 
we  should  find  fruit,  or  even  flowers,  let  us  be  thankful.  If 
we  encounter  only  briars,  it  will  not  be  the  first  half  hour 
we  have  wasted. 

The  fact  that  you  are  members  of  the  Reading  Club  indi- 
cates that  you  are  seeking  knowledge.  I  trust  that  you  are 
finding  it, — that  every  stroke  of  the  intellectual  pick  turns 
up  a  golden  nugget;  but  do  not  make  the  mistake  of  sup- 
posing that  all  the  wisdom  of  the  world  is  bound  in  calf. 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  177 

You  may  know  all  that  was  ever  penned  in  papyrus  or 
graved  on  stone,  written  on  tablets  of  clay  or  preserved  in 
print  and  still  be  ignorant — not  even  know  how  to  manage 
a  husband.  As  a  rule  people  read  without  proper  discrim- 
ination, and  those  who  are  most  careful  often  go  furthest 
astray.  I  once  knew  a  woman  with  no  more  music  in  her 
soul  than  a  rat-tail  file,  who  spent  three  laborious  years 
learning  to  play  the  piano,  then  closed  the  instrument  and 
never  touched  it  again.  One  day  I  said  to  her: 

"Mary,  what  good  did  all  the  patient  practice  do  you?" 
"Lot's  o'  good,"  she  replied ;  "I  used  to  be  dreadfully 
ashamed  to  have  people  know  that  I  couldn't  play."  And 
a  great  deal  of  laborious  reading  is  undertaken  on  the  same 
principle  that  Mary  learned  to  play  the  piano — and  is  of  just 
as  little  benefit.  Many  people  are  with  books  as  with  med- 
icine— imagine  that  whatever  is  hardest  to  get  down  will  do 
them  the  most  good.  No  mortal  man — and,  as  the  preach- 
er correctly  stated,  the  men  embrace  the  women — ever  yet 
got  any  permanent  good  out  of  a  book  unless  he  enjoyed  its 
perusal.  Jno.  J.  Ingalls  says  that  everybody  praises  Mil- 
ton's Paradise  Lost,  but  nobody  reads  it.  Ingalls  is  mis- 
taken. Everybody  making  any  pretension  to  culture  has 
read  the  book — as  a  disagreeable  duty;  but  that  man  don't 
live — at  least  outside  of  the  lunatic  asylum — who  can  quote 
a  dozen  lines  of  it.  Same  with  Dante's  Divine  Comedia 
and  a  host  of  other  books  with  which  people  are  expected  to 
inflict  their  brains.  Read  few  books  and  those  of  the  very 
best, — books  that  you  enjoy.  Read  them  thoroughly; 
make  them  your  very  own — then  forget  them  as  soon  as 
possible.  Having  submitted  to  the  mental  or  moral  disci- 
pline of  another,  decline  to  lean  on  him,  but  stand  up  in  your 
own  independent  individuality.  Don't  be  a  copy.  There  is 
on  earth  no  more  pitiable  person  than 

"The  bookful  blockhead,  ignorantly  read, 
With   loads   of   learned   lumber   in   his  head." 

Do  not  interpret  too  literally.  What  I  warn  you  against 
is  the  habit,  all  too  common,  of  imagining  ourselves  rich  be- 
cause we  have  counted  the  golden  hoard  of  others.  One 
may  admire  the  Medicean  Venus  without  becoming  a  sculp- 
tor, or  have  Plato  at  his  fingers'  ends  and  ever  remain  a  fool. 
Were  I  an  artist  I  would  study  with  attention  the  works  of 
all  the  great  masters ;  but  when  I  put  my  hand  to  my  own 
task  I  would  turn  my  back  upon  them  all  and  my  face  to 
nature.  My  work  would  then  be  a  "creation,"  not  a  copy. 
Did  I  aspire  to  be  truly  learned  I  would  study  the  words  of 


178  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

the  world's  wisest — then  dig  for  wisdom  on  my  own  behoof, 
I  would  thus  become  a  philosopher  instead  of  a  parrot. 


I  have  been  frequently  called  an  iconoclast,  and  bad  as  the 
title  is  popularly  supposed  to  be,  I  trust  it  is  not  altogether 
undeserved.  I  have  striven  to  break  foolish  idols  and  shat- 
ter false  ideals,  to  hurl  unclean  gods  from  their  pedestals  in 
the  public  pantheon.  A  work  of  destruction  is  not,  I  ad- 
mit, of  a  high  order.  Anybody  may  destroy ;  it  requires 
genius  to  build  up.  The  wonder  of  the  ancient  world  sank 
to  ruin  irremediable  beneath  the  torch  of  a  morbid  dude  who 
had  rather  be  "damned  to  everlasting  fame"  than  altogether 
forgotten.  A  hungry  wolf  may  destroy  a  human  life  which 
Almighty  God  has  brought  to  perfection  thro'  long  years  of 
labor.  But  destruction  is  sometimes  necessary.  The  seas 
must  be  cleared  of  pirates  before  commerce  can  flourish ;  the 
antiquated  and  useless  building  must  come  down  before  the 
schoolhouse  or  business  block  can  occupy  the  site.  In  the 
great  cities  are  men  who  do  nothing  but  destroy  old  build- 
ings— professional  wreckers  of  those  works  of  man  that 
have  outlived  their  usefulness.  They  build  nothing;  but 
are  they,  therefore,  to  be  condemned?  So  in  the  social 
world,  a  man  may  be  a  professional  wrecker,  without  the 
constructive  ability  to  build  a  political  platform  on  a  pie- 
crate,  and  still  be  useful,  indispensable.  The  wrecker  of 
bad  buildings  does  not  contract  to  put  good  ones  in  their 
places;  nor  is  the  iconoclast  under  any  obligation  to  find  a 
heavenly  grace  for  every  false  god  that  falls  beneath  his 
hammer,  a  saint  for  every  sinner  he  holds  up  to  scorn,  a  new 
truth  for  every  old  falsehood  he  fells  to  earth.  He  may,  if 
he  thinks  proper,  leave  that  labor  to  others  and  go  on,  with 
brand  and  bomb,  bludgeon  and  bill-hook,  wrecking,  destroy- 
ing— playing  John  the  Baptist  to  a  greater  to  come  after. 

A  great  many  good  people  have  taken  the  trouble  to  in- 
form me  that  I  am  a  pessimist.  Perhaps  so;  but  I  am  not 
worrying  much  about  it.  A  pessimist  is  a  person  somewhat 
difficult  to  define.  The  fool  who  smokes  in  powder-house, 
or  believes  that  his  neighbors  always  speak  well  of  him  be- 
hind his  back ;  the  wife  who  encourages  her  husband  to  pay 
court  to  other  women  on  the  supposition  that  no  harm  can 
ensue;  the  banker  who  accepts  a  man's  unsecured  note  be- 
cause he  is  a  church  member  and  powerful  in  prayer,  and  the 
servant  girl  who  lights  the  fire  with  kerosene— then  goes 
to  join  the  angels  taking  your  household  goods  and  gods 
with  her — are  certainly  not  pessimists ;  they  are  only  idiots. 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  179 

It  is  easy  enough  to  say  that  a  pessimist  is  a  person  af- 
flicted with  an  incurable  case  of  mulligrubs — one  whom 
nothing  in  all  earth  or  heaven  or  hades  pleases ;  one  who  us- 
ually deserves  nothing,  yet  grumbles  if  he  gets  it.  But  we 
should  not  forget  that  every  reform  this  world  has  known ; 
every  effort  that  has  lifted  man  another  notch  above  the 
brute  level ;  every  star  in  our  flag  of  freedom ;  every  line  and 
letter  in  our  constitution  of  human  liberty;  every  gem  of 
knowledge  that  gleams  in  the  great  world's  intellectual 
crown  of  glory ;  every  triumph  of  science  and  religion,  phil- 
osophy and  mechanics  was  the  work  of  pessimists,  so-called 
— of  men  who  were  not  satisfied  with  the  world's  condition 
and  set  determinedly  to  work  to  better  it.  They  strove 
with  their  full  strength  against  those  conditions  panegyrized 
and  poetized  by  the  smirking  optimists  of  their  time,  and 
thereby  incurred  the  enmity  of  pedants  and  self-sufficient 
purists, — were  denounced  and  denied,  belittled  and  belied. 

But,  says  the  enthusiastic  optimist,  things  are  not  what 
they  used  to  be.  When  a  college  of  cardinals  gave  Galileo 
to  the  gaoler  for  maintaining  that  "the  world  do  move;" 
when  Christ  cast  forth  the  money  manipulators  and  purged 
the  porches  of  the  temple  of  the  disreputable  dove  dealers; 
when  Luther  raised  the  standard  of  revolt  and  the  Puritan 
packed  his  grip  there  were  cruel  wrongs  to  right.  But  look 
at  us  now !  We've  got  a  constitution  and  a  Confession  of 
Faith,  prize  rings  and  Parisian  gowns,  sent  missionaries  to 
Madagascar  and  measured  Mars'  two  moons.  Of  course 
we've  made  some  mendicants,  but  please  admire  the  multi- 
farious beauty  of  our  millionaires !  Who  can  doubt  that 
we've  triumphed  over  the  world,  the  flesh  and  the  devil? 
Have  not  the  Spanish  inquisition  and  the  English  Court  of 
High  Commission  gone  glimmering?  Do  we  bore  the 
tongues  of  Quakers  or  amputate  the  ears  of  non-conformists 
as  in  Auld  Lang  Syne?  Do  we  not  run  troublesome  wives 
into  the  divorce  court  instead  of  into  the  river,  as  was  once 
our  wont, — scientifically  roast  our  criminals  with  electricity 
instead  of  pulling  their  heads  off  with  a  hair  halter  ?  Do  we 
not  fight  our  political  battles  with  wind  instead  of  war  clubs  ? 
Have  not  our  great  partisan  paladins  substituted  gall  for 
Greek  fire  ? 

Progressing  we  certainly  are,  but  the  devil  has  adapted 
the  Fabian  tactics  and  is  leading  us  a  wild  dance  thro'  un- 
profitable deserts.  While  we  have  been  shattering  ethnic 
images  he  has  been  building  new  idols.  While  we  have 
been  dragging  the  Phalaris  Bull  from  its  pedestal  the  Golden 
Calf  of  ancient  Israel  has  reached  maturity  and  maternity 


180  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

and  its  progeny  is  now  worshipped  in  a  thousand  panthe- 
ons. 

Everywhere  the  false  and  the  true,  the  good  and  the  evil, 
the  lambent  light  of  heaven  and  the  sulphurous  shadows 
of  hell  meet  and  blend.  Nowhere,  yet  everywhere,  floats 
the  white  veil  and  flaming  ensign  of  the  modern  Mokanna — 
and  we  stand  wrangling  about  the  proper  cut  of  a  collar ;  de- 
bating whether  the  Gadarenes,  whose  swine  the  outcasc 
devils  drowned,  were  Jews  or  Gentiles;  dogmatizing  anent 
the  proper  form  of  baptism ;  doubting  with  which  hand  we 
should  tip  the  hat;  wondering  if  Joseph's  coat  were  a  sack 
or  a  swallow-tail — ninety-and-nine  out  of  every  hundred 
wasting  upon  childish  trifles  the  strength  given  us  to  do  the 
work  of  demi-gods — and  every  foolish  breath,  every  heart- 
beat bearing  us  across  Time's  narrow  sands  into  the  broad 
bosom  of  that  sea  which  hath  no  shore ! 

What  does  the  all-seeing  sun  that  has  for  so  many  cen- 
turies glared  down  upon  this  wretched  farce-tragedy,  think 
of  it  all?  And  yet  man  boasts  that  he  is  the  mortal  image 
of  immortal  God !  It  was  for  this  trifling,  straddling  biped, 
intent  only  upon  getting  his  goose-head  above  other  foolish 
geese,  that  the  Regent  of  the  universe  suffered  ignominy 
and  death!  I  sometimes  think  that  had  the  Almighty  cast 
the  human  horoscope  he  would  never  have  given  Noah  a 
hint  to  go  in  out  of  the  wet. 


I  am  no  perfectionist.  I  do  not  build  the  spasmodic  sob 
nor  spill  the  scalding  tear  because  all  men  are  not  Sir  Gala- 
hads  in  quest  of  the  Holy  Grail,  and  all  women  angels  with 
two  pair  o'  reversible  wings  and  the  aurora  borealis  for  a 
hat-band.  I  might  get  lonesome  in  a  world  like  that.  I 
do  not  expect  to  see  religion  without  cant,  wealth  without 
want,  and  virtue  without  vice ;  but  I  do  hope  to  see  the  hu  - 
man  race  devote  itself  to  grander  aims  than  following  the 
fashions  and  camping  on  the  trail  of  the  cart-wheel  dollar.  I 
want  to  see  more  homes  and  fewer  hovels,  more  men  and 
fewer  dudes.  I  want  to  see  more  women  with  the  moral 
courage  to  brave  the  odium  of  being  old  maids  rather  than 
the  pitiful  weakness  to  become  loveless  wives.  I  want  to 
see  more  mothers  who  would  rather  be  queens  of  their 
homes  than  the  favorites  of  fashionable  circles ;  women  who 
would  rather  have  the  love  of  their  husbands  than  the  in- 
solent admiration  of  the  whole  he-world — women  who  do 
not  know  too  much  at  15  and  too  little  at  50. 

I  want  to  see  more  men  who  are  not  a  constant  reminder 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  181 

of  a  monkey  ancestry.  Some  philosopher  once  remarked: 
"As  between  men  and  dogs,  give  me  dogs."  I  have  been 
often  tempted  to  indorse  the  sentiment — and  I  am  not  much 
of  a  lover  of  dogs  either.  I  want  to  see  men  who  are  not 
fops  in  their  youth,  fools  in  their  prime  and  egotists  in  their 
old  age — a  race  of  manly  men  to  whom  life  is  not  a  lascivi- 
ous farce;  whose  god  is  not  gold;  who  do  not  worship  at 
the  shrine  of  the  Pandemian  Venus  nor  devote  their  lives  to 
the  service  of  Mammon,  "the  least  erect  of  all  the  angelic 
host  that  fell  from  heaven."  I  want  to  see  men  who  scorn  the 
pusillanimity  of  the  policy-prayer,  who, — like  Caesar,  dare 
tell  greybeards  the  truth  e'en  tho'  it  cost  a  crown ;  men  of 
leonine  courage,  men  of  iron  mould,  men  strong  of  hand  and 
heart,  who  defiantly  throw  down  the  gage  to  destiny — who 
can  trample  hell  itself  beneath  their  proud  feet,  even  while  it 
consumes  them. 


The  dream  may  be  Utopian,  I  much  fear  it  will  never 
be  made  a  blessed  reality  by  either  philosophy  or  religion. 
We  have  had  both  for  forty  centuries,  yet  the  fool  has  be- 
come ever  more  offensive  and  the  liar  has  overrun  the  land. 
Yet  we  imagine  that  because  we  no  longer  live  in  caves  and 
fight  naked  with  the  wild  beasts  of  the  forest  for  our  food 
we  are  away  up  at  the  head  of  the  procession,  with  Greek  civ- 
ilization distanced  and  all  the  other  times  and  half  times 
nowhere. 

Human  development,  like  the  earth,  the  sun,  the  stars- 
like  all  things  brought  into  being  by  the  breath  of  Omni- 
potent God — travels  ever  in  a  circle.  Savagery  and  ignor- 
ance, barbarism  and  ambition,  civilization  and  sybaritism, 
dudeism  and  intellectual  decay;  then  once  more  savagery 
and  ignorance  proclaim  the  complete  circle, — that  we  have 
traveled  from  nadir  to  zenith  and  from  zenith  to  nadir — 
when  once  again  we  begin  with  painful  steps  and  slow  to 
repace  the  path  which  carries  us  to  the  very  verge  of 
godhood  and  wreathes  our  brows  with  immortal  bays,  then 
brings  us  down — even  while  we  think  we  mount — until 
we  touch  a  level  beneath  the  very  brute.  Such  has  ever 
been  the  world's  history,  and  such  it  will  ever  be  until  a  force 
is  found  that  can  transform  this  circle  into  a  straight  line — 
that  can  blend  the  rugged  manhood  of  the  barbarian  with 
the  graces  of  our  higher  civilization  and  give  us  wisdom 
without  weakness  and  culture  without  cowardice;  that  can 
incorporate  us  as  corpuscles  in  the  social  organism  without 
eliminating  every  spark  of  God-like  individuality,  making 


182  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

us  helpless  dependents  upon  social,  political  and  religious 
precedent. 

If  the  Car  of  Progress  travels  in  a  circle — and  history  says 
it  does;  if  neither  science,  philosophy  nor  religion  can  de- 
flect it  from  its  seemingly  predestined  path — and  the  condi- 
tion of  their  birth-place  proclaims  their  failure  so  to  do — 
where  is  hope  ?  Must  the  human  race  forever  go  the  weary 
round  of  birth  and  death,  like  Buddhist  souls  wandering 
thro'  all  that's  fair  and  foul,  until  it  finds  Nirvana  in  the 
destruction  of  the  world?  Not  so,  for  there  is  a  hope — a 
blessed  hope — that  like 

"A  poising  eagle  burns  above  the  unrisen  morrow." 

That  hope  is  in  the  union  of  all  the  mighty  forces  that  make 
for  the  emancipation  of  mankind, — a  union  of  religion  and 
philosophy,  science  and  woman.  And  of  these  the  first  is 
the  last  and  the  last  is  the  first  in  point  of  power  and  im- 
portance. 


When  I  reflect  that  until  within  comparatively  recent 
times  women  were  slaves,  I  don't  much  wonder  that  the  old 
civilizations  went  to  the  dogs — that  the  millennium  is  not 
yet  due.  Trying  to  make  a  civilization  that  would  stick 
without  the  help  of  woman  were  like  building  a  cock-tail 
with  a  basis  of  buttermilk.  God  gave  her  to  man  to  be  an 
helpmeet,  not  a  plaything.  I  don't  think  that  she  can  help 
him  much  by  going  into  politics,  or  becoming  a  crusading 
she-Peter-the-Hermit  while  her  own  children  need  her  care , 
but  I  do  believe  that  the  wife  and  mother — that  erstwhile 
ignorant  drudge,  raised  by  God's  great  mercy  to  royalty — 
made  Queen  of  the  home,  and  thereby  absolute  Empress  of 
the  great  round  earth — is  to  be  the  dynamics  of  a  new  and 
grander  civilization  that  can  never  recede ;  that  the  woman- 
ly woman,  self-poised  as  a  star,  pure  as  the  polar  snows,  fit 
companion  for  the  true  nobleman  of  nature,  is  to  be  the 
Providence  that  will  lead  humanity,  step  by  step,  ever  on- 
ward and  upward,  until  our  cruel  age  of  iron  is  transformed 
into  an  age  of  gold  in  which  there'll  be  neither  millionaire 
nor  mendicant,  master  nor  slave — in  which  Selfishness  will 
be  considered  the  worst  of  crimes  and  Love  the  all-powerful 
law. 

Such,  ladies,  is  my  dream  of  the  future.  You  see,  with 
true  mannish  instinct,  I  throw  the  work  o?  the  world's  salva- 
tion upon  the  women.  I  don't  know,  however,  but  it's  re- 
tributive justice.  If  you  got  us  fired  out  of  the  first  Para- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  183 

disc  it  is  your  duty  to  find  another  and  put  us  in  possession. 
But  really  with  all  due  respect  to  Sacred  Writ,  I  could  never 
accept  that  serpent  story  without  considerable  salt.  My 
observation — and  experience — has  been  that  men  are  much 
more  addicted  to  the  snake  habit  than  are  women.  I  gath- 
er from  Genesis  that  after  the  Edenic  reptile  had  done  the 
damage  it  was  condemned  to  go  upon  its  belly  all  the  days 
of  its  life.  That  indicates  that  it  was  not  only  a  good  conver- 
sationalist, but  had  legs.  Now  I  submit  it  to  you  in  all 
seriousness :  which  member  of  the  original  family  was  most 
likely  to  see  such  a  serpent  as  that?  I  think  I  should  have 
given  Adam  the  Keeley  cure,  then  crossexamined  him  a 
little  before  laying  the  burden  of  the  blame  on  Eve.  If  the 
latter  was  really  the  tempter  she  was  probably  trying  to 
reach  the  heart  of  her  hubby  by  that  direct  route,  the  stom- 
ach— lost  heaven  for  love,  as  too  many  of  her  daughters 
have  since  done.  The  fact  that  Adam  was  not  willing  to 
father  her  fault  proved  him  unworthy  his  wife,  and  the  bad 
example  he  set  is  too  often  followed  by  many  of  his  sons — 
who  attribute  all  their  trials  and  tribulations  to  the  patient 
wives  whose  watchful  care  keeps  them  out  of  the  peniten- 
tiary. Whatever  may  have  been  Eve's  fortune,  Adam  was 
no  great  loser  by  being  ejected  from  Eden,  for  the  man  who 
possesses  the  love  of  a  good  woman  carries  Paradise  with 
him  wherever  he  goes.  A  woman's  love  can  transform  a 
hovel  into  a  heaven  and  fill  it  with  supernal  sunshine — and 
her  scorn  can  make  perdition  of  a  palace  and  put  in  all  the 
fancy  touches. 

Woman  is  the  only  thing  extant,  if  Genesis  be  believed, 
that  was  not  evolved  from  a  solid  slug  of  nothing.  That 
I  presume,  is  why  she  amounts  to  something.  Nothing 
was  good  enough  raw  material  of  which  to  make  the  father 
of  mankind;  but  when  the  Almighty  came  to  create  our 
common  mother  he  required  something  more  substantial 
than  a  hole  in  the  atmosphere. 

I  always  bank  on  a  boy  who  has  a  good  mother,  regard- 
less of  what  the  old  man  may  be.  The  fathers  of  philoso- 
phers have  sometimes  been  fools,  but  their  mothers  never. 
A  wise  man  may  beget  dudes  or  a  good  man  practical  poli- 
ticians; but  it's  his  misfortune,  not  his  fault.  The  good 
Lord  expects  no  man  to  gather  grapes  of  thorns  or  figs  of 
thistles.  I  have  yet  to  hear  of  a  single  man  who  became  dis- 
tinguished in  any  line  of  human  endeavor  according  to  his 
father  the  credit  for  his  greatness.  Character  is  moulded 
at  the  mother's  knee,  and  in  the  light  of  her  loving  eyes  is 
born  that  ambition  which  buoys  man  up  in  a  sea  of  troubles 


184  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

— that  drives  him  on  thro'  dangers  and  difficulties,  straight 
to  the  shining  goal. 

The  Nineteenth  century  marks  the  culmination  of  an  era 
of  human  triumphs,  a  brilliant  coruscation  of  victories  over 
the  cohorts  of  Ignorance  and  Prejudice;  but  its  crown  of 
imperishable  glory  is  the  recognition  that  woman  was  creat- 
ed to  be  man's  companion  and  co-laborer  instead  of  his 
chattel,  his  joint  sovereign  of  the  earth  instead  of  his  slave. 
Fronting  the  dawn  of  a  grander  day,  her  hand  ungyved  and 
her  brain  unfettered ;  with  broader  opportunities  for  useful- 
ness and  boasting  a  nobler  beauty  than  during  the  dark  and 
dreary  centuries  that  lie  behind  her  like  a  hideous  dream — 
such  is  the  woman  of  the  Nineteenth  century,  and  upon  the 
shapely  shoulders  of  this  new  Pallas  I  hang  my  second 
Providence,  to  her  loving  hands  I  commit  the  destiny  of  the 
race,  to  her  true  heart  the  salvation  of  the  world. 


PUGILISM  VS.  HYPOCRISY. 

The  announcement  that  Corbett  and  Fitzsimmons  will 
meet  in  the  fistic  arena  at  Dallas  to  determine  which  is  the 
better  man,  has,  as  might  have  been  expected,  provoked  a 
veritable  deluge  of  sanctified  "gush"  and  sentimental  "rot." 
The  press  and  pulpit  of  Texas  were  immediately  seized  with 
moral  jimjams  and  began  to  cut  fantastic  capers  before  high 
heaven.  One  would  suppose  from  their  doleful  jeremiads 
and  frantic  protests  that  the  bottom  was  about  to  be  knocked 
out  of  the  Christian  cosmos,  mortality  sent  careening  over 
the  ropes,  civilization  swiped  from  the  face  of  the  shrinking 
earth  and  chaos  come  again.  Consistency  is  a  jewel  not 
found  in  the  casket  of  the  latter-day  Jonahs.  For  years 
past  slugging-matches  have  been  of  frequent  occurrence  in 
Texas,  and  have  provoked  scarce  a  protest  from  those 
goody-goodies  who  are  now  having  a  conniption  fit  every 
fifteen  minutes  over  the  Corbett-Fitzsimmons  affair.  It  is 
a  well-known  fact  that  the  less  science  fistic  combatants 
possess  the  more  liable  they  are  to  dp  each  other  serious 
bodily  harm.  A  "mill"  between  unskilled  sluggers  resem- 
bles nothing  so  much  as  a  kicking  match  between  a  brace 
of  vicious  mules,  in  which  the  beast  that  can  stand  the 
most  punishment  wins  the  battle,  while  a  contest  by  well- 
trained  athletes  were  like  the  fine  sword-play  of  expert 
fencers.  The  pending  bout  is  not  likely  to  be  nearly  so 
"brutal"  as  many  "mills"  fought  in  Texas  during  the  past 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  185 

half-dozen  years,  and  duly  reported  by  the  very  papers  that 
want  the  visiting  champions  put  in  the  penitentiary.  The 
professional  "moral  element"  is  entirely  too  subsequent  in 
getting  its  Ebenezer  up,  and  I  suggest  that  it  be  pulled 
down  before  a  disgusted  world  expectorates  upon  it.  Hav- 
ing swallowed  a  whole  herd  of  mangy  camels,  the  self- 
styled  "moral  element"  should  not  employ  a  brass  band  to 
call  attention  to  the  fact  that  it  is  now  straining  so  hard  at 
a  gnat  that  its  umbilical  cord  is  in  danger  of  collapse.  The 
abuse  heaped  upon  the  progressive  city  of  Dallas  because  it 
made  a  bid  for  the  great  contest,  is  but  the  dishonest  vapor- 
ings  of  a  canting  hypocrisy,  accentuated  by  morbid  minds 
and  bilious  livers.  If  Dallas  were  making  deliberate  prepa- 
ration to  violate  a  well-established  law  of  the  land  it  were 
well  enough  to  criticise  her;  but  the  statute  anent  prize- 
fighting, like  many  other  enactments  by  Texas  legislatures, 
is  not  considered  by  competent  lawyers  as  one  whit  more 
reliable  than  a  camp-meeting  certificate  of  conversion.  And 
it  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  if  the  law  in  question  would 
stand  the  crucible  of  the  courts,  those  busy  little  souls  who 
consider  themselves  pious  because  they  dislike  to  see  other 
people  enjoy  themselves,  would  have  clamored  for  its  en- 
forcement long  ere  this. 

The  Iconoclast  is  not  the  apologist  of  pugilism.  Its  voice 
is  ever  for  peace — peace  in  its  most  virulent  form.  I  have 
had  a  sneaking  respect  for  Grover  Cleveland  ever  since  he 
sent  a  substitute  to  fight  the  Southern  Confederacy  while 
he  remained  at  home  to  play  pinocle  with  the  pretty  girls. 
It  proved  that  while  he  may  not  be  much  of  a  statesman  in 
time  of  peace,  there's  no  picnic  ants  on  his  judgment  in 
time  of  war.  But  I  do  insist  that  if  we  are  to  have  prize 
fights  here  in  Texas  they  should  be  contests  between  expert 
boxers  instead  of  awkward  clowns  who  pound  each  other 
to  a  pulp  to  make  a  hoodlum  holiday.  Nor  is  a  fistic 
encounter  between  first-class  athletes  altogether  an  unmixed 
evil.  It  inoculates  our  young  men  with  a  desire  for  physi- 
cal development,  and  is  a  splendid  object  lesson  'in  the  very 
necessary  art  of  self-defence.  Every  boy  should  learn  to 
box;  it  is  a  manly  accomplishment,  necessary  to  the  per- 
fect physical  development  of  the  race.  It  is  infinitely  better 
that  a  boy  should  get  a  black  eye  or  a  bloody  nose  occa- 
sionally, and  grow  up  masculine  and  self-reliant,  than  run 
to  chrysanthemums  and  creased  twousahs,  flash  dickeys  and 
effeminate  dudeism.  Those  who  make  super-goodness  a 
paying  profession  sneer  at  the  claim  that  pugilism  is  a 
"manly  sport."  However  that  may  be  it  is  certainly  pre- 


186  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

ferable  to  employing  brazen  apostates  to  defame  Catholic 
nuns — or  raping  infants  in  Baptist  universities.  Nothing 
is  more  conducive  to  continence  than  severe  athletic  train- 
ing: hence  it  might  not  be  a  bad  plan  to  make  a  hot  whirl 
with  the  gloves  a  part  of  the  daily  devotional  exercise  of 
all  professing  he-Christians.  While  boxing  does  not  insure 
morality,  it  is  infinitely  more  profitable  than  empty  dogma- 
tizing. While  the  world  may  not  fully  approve  of  Corbett 
and  Fitzsimmons  facing  each  other  in  the  "squared  circle" 
like  contending  Titans,  it  will  certainly  esteem  them  above 
the  cymling-headed  lollipops  whose  highest  .accomplish- 
ment is  the  nursing  of  canes.  The  proposed  '"mill,"  while 
not  so  elevating,  perhaps,  as  a  slumgullion  editorial  in  the 
Houston  Post,  or  an  official  $5-a-minute  prayer,  is  calculated 
to  inspire  respect  for  nature's  weapons  and  thereby  assist  in 
relegating  the  six-shooter  to  the  rear.  Personal  encounters 
will  be  of  occasional  occurrence  so  long  as  man  inhabits  the 
earth;  hence  it  might  not  be  amiss  for  even  "Christian 
Texas"  to  take  an  occasional  lesson  in  the  art  of  self-defense 
from  men  who  do  not  gouge  out  eyes,  chew  off  ears  or  be- 
stride the  brisket  of  a  fallen  foe  and  pound  his  face  to  a 
pumice.  Whatever  may  be  said  against  the  "ring,"  it  is 
one  place  where  a  man  gets  absolutely  fair  play,  and  that  is 
more  than  can  be  said  of  the  journalistic  arena — or  a  mob  of 
Baptist  brethren  assembled  to  hear  one  of  their  number 
back-cap  his  betters  and  descant  upon  the  awful  iniquity  of 
the  Church  of  Rome. 

Striving  to  eliminate  these  contests  of  strength  and  skill 
were  much  like  trying  to  tie  up  John  Barleycorn  with  a 
Prohibition  string.  Man  is  naturally  combative.  As  far 
back  as  we  can  trace  his  history  he  has  rejoiced  in  trials  of 
physical  force.  The  Greeks  of  Homer's  day  fought  with 
the  terrible  cestus ;  when  Rome  ruled  the  world  every  citi- 
zen was  expected  to  be  a  soldier ;  the  English  could  not  get 
fighting  enough  in  the  tented  field  and  resorted  to  tilt  and 
tourney.  Despite  our  so-called  civilization  man  is  very 
much  a  savage.  "The  glory  of  the  young  man  is  his 
strength,"  just  as  it  was  when  Solomon  sat  upon  the  throne 
of  ancient  Israel,  and  it  is  well.  There  is  hope  for  a  war- 
like and  aggressive  people.  Such  are  the  characteristics  of 
an  advancing  civilization,  while  dudeism  is  certain  evidence 
of  decay.  That  man  who  doesn't  relish  a  rattling  fight — 
e'en  tho'  it  be  only  a  dog  fight — should  be  put  in  petticoats 
and  his  place  in  the  world's  economy  supplied  by  the  "com- 
ing: woman."  He  is  better  qualified  to  lead  a  pug  around 
with  a  pink  ribbon  and  deodorize  diapers  than  to  sway  the 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  187 

sceptre  of  American  sovereignty.  Half  those  who  damn 
prize-fighting  in  public  would  swim  a  river  to  obtain  a  news- 
paper containing  a  write-up  of  an  important  "mill"  by 
rounds.  When  Sullivan  bested  Kilrain  I  chanced  to  be 
stopping  with  a  devout  deacon  who  was  particularly  severe 
on  pugilism.  He  said  an  editor  who  would  print  an  ac- 
count of  a  prize  fight  ought  to  be  put  in  the  penitentiary — 
meaning  me;  yet  on  the  morning  after  the  mill  I  found 
that  good  old  man  with  his  nose  buried  in  a  newspaper,  and 
he  wasn't  reading  the  religious  column,  either.  He  was 
fairly  wallowing  in  counters  and  uppercuts,  stingers  and 
stand-offs.  He  swooped  down  upon  it  like  a  hungry  hen- 
hawk  on  an  unripe  gosling,  read  it  through  to  the  last  line, 
then  rolled  his  eyes  to  heaven  like  a  calf  with  the  colic  and 
wondered  what  this  wicked  old  world  "was  coming  to.  Had 
I  declined  to  print  it  he  would  have  written  me  a  compli- 
mentary letter — and  transferred  his  patronage  to  some  other 
paper. 

There  must  be  some  vent  for  the  combative  spirit  which 
permeates  the  American  people,  and  the  glove  contest  is  the 
most  satisfactory  and  the  least  dangerous  yet  discovered. 
Statistics  prove  that  a  dozen  men  are  killed  and  as  many 
crippled  at  football  where  one  is  seriously  injured  in  the 
fistic  arena.  At  inter-collegiate  football  games  it  is  cus- 
tomary to  have  a  surgeon  present  to  care  for  the  wounded ; 
but  I  have  yet  to  see  one  in  attendance  in  his  official  capac- 
ity at  a  prize  fight.  In  view  of  these  facts  the  sanctified 
hullabaloo  now  heard  because  of  the  pending  event  in  the 
world  of  pugilism  is  calculated  to  make  sensible  people  long 
for  the  coming  of  the  fool-killer. 


ANTONIA  TEIXEIRA. 

The  Iconoclast  is  not  in  the  habit  of  commenting  on  par- 
ticular social  ulcers  and  special  sectarian  scandals.  It  pre- 
fers to  deal  with  broad  principle  rather  than  individual  of- 
fenders. To  even  catalogue  the  sexual  crimes  of  professing 
Christians  and  people  of  social  pre-eminence — to  turn  the 
calcium  for  even  a  moment  into  all  the  gruesome  closets  of 
"respectability"  and  upon  every  sectarian  cesspool  redolent 
with  "the  odor  of  sanctity" — would  consume  the  space  of 
such  a  periodical,  while  proving  about  as  profitable  as  point- 
ing out  each  festering  pustule  on  the  person  of  a  Hot 
Springs  habitue  trailing  blindly  in  the  wake 'of  the  Pande- 


188  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

mian  Venus ;  but  once  or  twice  in  a  decade  a  case  arises  so 
horrible  in  conception,  so  iniquitous  in  outline,  so  damnable 
in  detail  that  it  were  impossible  to  altogether  ignore  it.  Such 
a  case  has  just  come  to  light,  involving  Baylor  University, 
that  Bulwark  of  the  Baptist  Church.  I  fain  would  pass  it 
by,  knowing  as  I  do  that  a  criticism,  however  dispassionate 
and  just,  will  be  misconstrued  by  those  good  Baptist  breth- 
ren who  tried  to  muzzle  me  while  ex-Priest  Slattery  foully 
defamed  me,  and  whose  religion  teaches  them  that  "with 
what  judgment  ye  judge  ye  shall  be  judged ;  and  with  what 
measure  ye  mete  it  shall  be  measured  to  you  again."  But 
on  this  point  they  have  naught  to  fear.  Had  they,  for  every 
sneaking  lie  they  have  told  about  me,  spawned  a  thousand ; 
and  had  "Brother"  Slattery,  in  the  fullness  of  his  Baptist 
Charity,  branded  me  as  a  horse-thief  and  proved  it,  I  could 
not,  tho'  vindictive  as  Thersites  and  gifted  with  the  vocabu- 
lary of  a  Carlyle,  do  even  and  exact  justice  to  the  case  of 
Antonia  Teixeira.  Crimes  similar  in  some  respects  have 
been  committed  in  White  Chapel  and  on  Boiler  avenue; 
but,  to  borrow  from  Macaulay,  "When  we  put  everything 
together — sensuality,  poltroonery,  baseness,  effrontery,  men- 
dacity, barbarity — the  result  is  something  which  in  a  novel 
we  should  condemn  as  caricature,  and  to  which,  we  venture 
to  say,  no  parallel  can  be  found  in  history.  It  is  a  case 
wherein  "the  qualities  which  are  the  proper  objects  of  ha- 
tred, and  the  qualities  which  are  the  proper  objects  of  con- 
tempt," preserve  an  exquisite  and  absolute  harmony.  Three 
times  I  have  essayed  to  write  of  this  enormous  iniquity,  this 
subter-brutish  crime  against  the  chastity  of  childhood,  and 
thrice  I  have  laid  down  my  pencil  in  despair.  As  there  is 
a  depth  of  the  sea  to  which  the  plummet  will  not  descend,  so 
are  there  depths  of  human  depravity  which  mind  cannot 
measure.  Language  hath  its  limits,  and  even  a  Dante  could 
only  liken  the  horrors  of  hell  to  earthly  symbols.  It  were 
as  impossible  to  describe  in  print  the  case  of  Antonia  Teix- 
eira as  to  etch  a  discord  or  paint  a  stench.  Before  justice 
can  be  done  to  such  a  subject  a  new  language  must  be  in- 
vented— a  language  whose  words  are  coals  of  juniper-wood; 
whose  sentences  are  woven  with  a  warp  of  aspics'  fangs  and 
a  woof  of  fire. 

We  all  remember  the  coming  to  Texas  of  Antonia  Teix- 
eira, the  dove-eyed  heteroscian,  and  the  brass-band  display 
made  of  the  modest  little  thing  by  the  Baptist  brethren, 
whose  long  years  of  missionary  labor  in  Brazil  had  snatched 
her  from  the  Papal  power — a  veritable  brand  from  the  burn- 
ing. A  tardy  consent  had  been  wrung  from  her  widowed 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  189 

mother  that  Antonia  should  be  brought  to  Texas.  The 
child  was  to  be  given  five  years'  schooling,  then  returned  to 
her  native  land  to  point  out  to  her  benighted  Catholic  coun- 
trymen the  water  route  to  the  Celestial  City.  Relying  upon 
this  promise,  the  simple  Brazilian  woman  consigned  her  lit- 
tle wild-flower  to  the  bosom  of  the  Baptist  church.  Five 
years !  What  an  eternity !  How  they  would  miss  her  at 
home — how  they  would  count  the  days  until  she  returned  to 
them,  a  cultured  lady,  as  wise  even  as  the  strange  priests 
who  spoke  the  English  tongue !  It  must  be  for  the  best,  she 
thought ;  so  the  poor  woman  crushed  her  heart  in  the  name 
of  Christ  and  took  up  her  cross.  And  Antonia?  How 
bright  the  world  before  her !  To  be  educated,  and  useful 
and  honored  both  in  this  world  and  the  world  to  come,  in- 
stead of  an  ignorant  little  beggar  about  the  streets  of  Bahia. 
Bearded  men  prayed  over  her  and  sentimental  women  wept 
to  know  that  she  was  saved — saved  from  the  purgatorium 
of  Popery !  And  then  she  was  "consecrated"  and  began  her 
studies  at  Baylor,  the  duly  ordained  "ward  of  the  Baptist 
church."  Not  yet  13  years  old,  and  such  honors  paid  her 
— what  might  she  not  expect  in  the  years  to  be?  How  the 
poor  little  heart  must  have  swelled  with  gratitude  to  the 
good  Baptist  brethren,  and  how  she  must  have  loved  every- 
thing, animate  and  inanimate,  that  the  good  God  had  made. 
But  ere  long  she  found  herself  in  Dr.  Burleson's  kitchen  in- 
stead of  the  class-room.  Instead  of  digging  Greek  roots 
she  was  studying  the  esculent  tuber.  Instead  of  being  pre- 
pared for  missionary  work,  this  "ward  of  the  Baptist  church" 
was  learning  the  duties  of  the  scullion — and  Dr.  Burleson 
has  informed  the  world  through  the  public  prints  that  as  a 
servant  she  was  not  worth  her  board  and  clothes.  But 
then  she  was  not  brought  hither  to  sling  pots,  but  to  pre- 
pare for  the  saving  of  souls.  Surely  the  blessed  Baptist 
church  will  provide  its  little  "ward"  with  board  and  clothes. 
Perhaps  the  poor  child  thought  that  scrubbing  floors  and 
playing  under-servant  was  part  of  a  liberal  education,  for 
she  made  no  complaint  to  her  self-constituted  guardians. 
After  some  three  years  of  the  kitchen  curriculum  she  was 
examined  in  the  office  of  a  secular  official  and  it  was  there 
found  that  she  had  not  made  much  progress  toward  effective 
missionary  work.  She  had  heard  something  of  the  Prot- 
estant faith  and  salvation  by  water,  but  did  not  understand 
it.  And  in  two  years  more  her  "education"  would  be  com- 
plete— the  promise  made  to  her  mother  redeemed!  But 
suddenly  it  was  discovered  that  the  "ward  of  the  Baptist 
church"  was  about  to  give  birth  to  a  babe.  Day  by  day  this 


190  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

mournful  fact  became  more  in  evidence,  and  finally  her 
dish-rag  and  scrub-broom  studies  were  suspended  because 
of  a  press  of  more  important  business.  She  was  sneaked  off 
to  a  private  house  and  nothing  said  about  her  condition  to 
the  secular  authorities — no  steps  taken  to  bring  the  destroy- 
er of  this  child  in  short  dresses  to  justice.  But  the  meddle- 
some officials  concluded  to  look  after  the  "ward  of  the  Bap- 
tist church"  a  little,  and  the  poor  child  told  them,  reluctant- 
ly enough,  how  she  had  been  dragged  from  her  culinary 
class-room,  drugged  and  three  times  criminally  assaulted — 
how  she  complained,  "but  nothing  was  done  about  it."  A 
medical  examination  demonstrated  conclusively  that  she 
had  been  the  victim  of  foul  play.  What  did  the  aged  presi- 
dent of  Baylor,  that  sanctum  sanctorum  of  the  Baptist 
church,  do  about  it?  Did  he  assist  in  bringing  to  justice 
the  man  who  had  dared  invade  the  sanctity  of  his  household 
and  despoil  the  duly  ordained  "ward  of  the  Baptist  church?" 
Not  exactly.  He  rushed  into  print  with  a  statement  to  the 
effect  that  the  child  was  a  thief  and  "crazy  after  the  boys" — 
that  he  had  "prayed  and  wept  over  her"  without  avail.  Are 
prayers  and  tears  the  only  safeguards  thrown  around  four- 
teen-year-old girls  at  Baylor  ?  They  do  those  things  differ- 
ently in  Convent  schools — supplement  prayers  and  tears 
with  a  watchful  care  that  makes  illicit  intercourse  practical- 
ly impossible.  No  matter  how  "crazy  after  the  boys"  a  girl 
in  short  dresses  may  be,  she  is  not  permitted  to  go  headlong 
to  the  devil — to  be  torn  to  pieces  and  impregnated  by  some 
lousy  and  lecherous  male  mastodon.  Dr.  Burleson  con- 
sidered the  idea  that  Antonia  had  been  ravished  as  ridicu- 
lous, yet  the  doctors  declare  it  one  of  the  most  damnable 
cases  of  outrage  and  laceration  within  their  knowledge — 
and  in  matters  of  this  kind  a  wicked  and  perverse  genera- 
tion is  more  likely  to  believe  doctors  of  medicine  than  doctors 
of  divinity.  The  students  at  Baylor  declare  that  instead  of 
being  "crazy  after  the  boys"  Antonia  was  particularly  mod- 
est and  womanly.  But  had  she  been  the  brazen  little  thing 
which  Dr.  Burleson  hastened  to  brand  her,  what  were  his 
duties  in  the  premises :  to  guard  her  with  especial  care,  or 
give  the  "boys"  an  opportunity  to  work  their  will,  then  turn 
her  out  with  a  Baptist  bastard  at  the  half-developed  breast  ? 
Enciente  at  14,  among  strangers  who  had  promised  her 
mother  that  no  harm  should  befall  her.  A  mother  while 
still  in  short  dresses,  and  branded  in  the  public  prints  as 
a  bawd  by  people  who  worship  One  who  forgave  Mary 
Magdalen!  We  might  have  expected  the  very  devils  in 
hell  to  weep  for  the  pity  of  it,  but  "Christian  charity"  had 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  191 

not  yet  reached  its  ultima  thule.  Another  Baptist  reverend 
had  to  have  his  say.  He  was  somewhat  interested  in  the 
matter,  his  brother  having  been  named  by  Antonia  as  her 
ravisher.  This  reverend  gentleman  tried  to  make  it  appear 
that  the  father  of  her  unborn  child  was  a  negro  servant  and 
her  accepted  paramour.  Had  this  been  true,  what  an  "ad." 
for  Baylor  University — that  fourteen-year-old  girls  com- 
mitted to  its  care  conceived  children  by  coons!  But  even 
Baylor  did  not  deserve  the  terrible  censure  of  Dr.  Burle- 
son's  pious  son-in-law,  and  Antonia  replied  to  this  insult 
added  to  injury  by  putting  a  white  child  in  evidence — a  child 
with  the  pale  blue  eye  and  wooden  face  characteristic  of 
those  who  thus  defamed  her.  When  the  girl's  condition 
became  known  the  men  about  town — "publicans  and  sin- 
ners" such  as  Christ  sat  with,  preferring  their  society  to  that 
of  the  pharisees — raised  a  handsome  purse  to  provide  for 
her  and  the  young  Baptist  she  was  about  to  bring  into  the 
world,  while  those  who  should  have  guarded  and  protected 
her  were  resorting  to  every  artifice  human  ingenuity  could 
devise  to  blacken  her  name,  to  forestall  pity,  prevent  chari- 
ty and  make  an  impartial  trial  of  the  case  impossible. 
While  men  who  never  professed  religion,  who  never  expect 
to  wear  feathers  and  fly  thro'  Elysian  fields,  could  not  talk 
to  each  other  about  the  case  without  crying,  those  wearing 
God's  livery  were  eager  to  trample  her  down  to  the  deepest 
hell  to  preserve  the  credit  of  their  denomination.  If  there 
is  anything  on  earth  calculated  to  make  a  public  prostitute 
of  an  unfortunate  girl  it  is  the  treatment  the  Baptist  brethren 
have  accorded  Antonia  Teixeira. 

At  this  writing  (June  27)  the  preliminary  trial  awaits  the 
convalescence  of  the  child  mother.  I  would  not  pre-judge 
the  case.  I  know  not  who  is  the  guilty  man  ;  but  I  do  know 
that  this  child  was  brought  from  her  faraway  home  by  men 
who  promised  to  protect  her  and  transform  her  into  a  cul- 
tured and  useful  woman,  and  who  so  far  neglected  their  duty 
that  she  was  debauched  at  Baylor  University  and  her  young 
life  forever  blighted.  Better  a  thousand  times  that  she 
should  have  remained  in  Brazil  to  say  her  pater  nosters  in 
the  Portugese  tongue;  better  that  she  should  have  wedded 
a  water-carrier  in  her  native  land  and  reared  up  sturdy  sons 
and  daughters  to  the  Church  of  Rome,  than  to  have  been 
transported  to  Texas  to  breed  illegitimate  Baptists.  I  do 
know  that  at  the  very  time  "Brother"  Slattery  was  writing 
us  against  the  awful  dangers  of  convent  schools — and  im- 
peaching the  chastity  of  the  Catholic  sisterhoods— and  the 
Waco  Baptists  were  crying  "awmen" — this  14-year-old  girl 


192  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

was  growing  great  with  child  at  Baylor  University!  I  do 
know  that  while  we  were  being  assured  that  among  all  the 
nuns  there  was  not  one  educated  woman — not  one  compe- 
tent to  superintend  the  education  of  a  child — a  girl  was 
completing  her  third  year  in  the  greatest  educational  insti- 
tute the  Baptists  of  Texas  can  boast,  and  in  all  that  time  she 
had  learned  but  little,  and  that  little  she  could  have  acquired 
almost  as  well  in  "Hell's  Half-Acre."  I  do  know  that  An- 
tonia  is  not  the  first  young  girl  to  be  sent  from  Baylor  in  dis- 
grace— that  she  is  not  the  first  to  complain  of  criminal  as- 
sault within  its  sanctified  "walls.  I  do  know  that  should 
a  girl  meet  with  a  mishap  at  a  convent  school  the  Catholic 
priests  would  not  turn  against  her  and  insult  her  family 
and  her  race  by  trying  to  fasten  the  fatherhood  of  her  un- 
born babe  upon  a  negro  servant.  I  do  know  that  instead 
of  trying  to  drive  the  unfortunate  girl  to  the  "Reservation" 
with  cowardly  calumnies,  they  would  draw  around  her  the 
sacred  circle  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  and  if  there  remained 
within  her  heart  one  spark  of  noble  womanhood  it  would  be 
fanned  by  the  white  wings  of  love  and  charity  into  ethereal 
flame.  I  do  know  that  if  Antonia  Teixeira  was  a  Catholic 
instead  of  a  half-baked  Baptist,  every  man  within  that 
church  would  be  her  brother,  every  woman  her  sister, — that 
every  church  bearing  the  cross  would  be  her  house  of 
refuge.  I  do  know  that  so  far  as  Baylor  University  is  con- 
cerned the  day  of  its  destiny  is  over  and  the  star  of  its  fate 
hath  declined;  that  the  brutal  treatment  the  Brazilian  child 
received  at  its  hands  will  pass  into  history  as  the  colossal 
crime  of  the  age,  and  that  generations  yet  to  be  will  couple 
its  name  with  curses  deep  as  those  which  Roman  matrons 
heaped  on  the  head  of  Sextus  Tarquinius — "he  that  wrought 
the  deed  of  shame." 


DANCING  TO  THE  DEVIL. 

THE  GRSAT  SALTATORIAL  SIN. 

Just  at  present  many  "progressive"  preachers  are  bring- 
ing all  their  powers  to  bear  upon  what  they  denominate  the 
dance  evil.  Even  before  Sam  Jones  began  to  blackguard 
the  ball-room  in  his  so-called  sermons,  various  Protestant 
divines  were  vociferously  denouncing  this  species  of  divert- 
isement  as  a  worship  of  that  trinity  of  wickedness — the 
World,  the  Flesh  and  the  Devil ;  but  the  Cracker  peddler 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  193 

of  pseudopiety  is  the  recognized  Peter-the-Hermit  of  the 
anti-saltatorian  crusade. 

There  was  a  time  when  it  was  considered  a  mortal  sin 
to  be  merry — when  professing  Christians  refrained  from 
harmless  jest  and  healthful  laughter  lest  they  displease  the 
Deity.  Some  ultrapietistic  people  eschewed  ornament,  wore 
unbecoming  clothes  and  cultivated  an  expression  such  as 
pertains  to  those  afflicted  with  cramp  colic  or  torpid  livers. 
The  idea  appears  to  have  been  that  by  making  themselves 
and  everybody  else  unnecessarily  miserable  in  this  world 
their  ecstacy  would  be  enhanced  in  the  great  hereafter. 
The  theater  was  tabooed,  the  ball-room  placed  under  the 
ban,  the  euchre-deck  banished  and  young  people  expected 
to  do  their  courting  with  a  solemnity  befitting  the  making 
of  contracts  in  a  coffin-factory.  All  the  joy  and  sweetness 
was  crushed  out  of  life  by  the  iron  hand  of  a  pessimistic 
orthodoxy;  the  sunshine  of  the  heart  turned  into  clammy 
London  fog  by  spectres  born  in  the  chaotic  brain  of  pious 
fools ;  the  pleasant  valleys  and  purple  hills  transformed  into 
monster-bearing  deserts,  the  refreshing  springs  into  bitter 
pools,  the  fragrant  flowers  into  cruel  throngs  by  those  too 
blind  to  see  that  the  cult  of  Christ  is  the  law  of  love,  the 
unfailing  fount  of  joy,  the  bloom  of  eternal  spring,  the  song 
of  birds  and  the  merry  laughter  of  men  and  maids. 

But  eventually  the  world  rebelled  against  the  pessimistic 
brand  of  piety — concessions  were  made,  perforce,  to  the  re- 
naissance of  reason.  Gradually  the  dark  clouds  fled  from 
the  hills  and  the  dismal  mists  from  the  valleys ;  the  crash  of 
cymbals  and  the  rythmic  pulse  of  dancing  feet  supplanted 
groans  and  moans — again  birds  sang,  flowers  bloomed  and 
perfumed  fountains  cast  their  grateful  spray  in  Hie  terrestrial 
vineyard  of  our  God.  It  was  no  longer  a  crime  to  be  happy, 
laughter  ceased  to  be  a  sin — a  sunny  face  came  to  be  regard- 
ed as  an  outward  evidence  of  an  inward  grace.  Toleration 
born  of  intelligence  budded  and  burgeoned  like  the  prover- 
bial green  bay  tree,  and  men  whose  fathers  thought  a  fiddle 
but  another  Red  Piper  to  lure  souls  to  hell,  felt  their  hearts 
swell  with  paternal  pride  as  they  looked  on  happy  sons  and 
graceful  daughters  marking  time  with  nimble  feet  to  music 
that  swept  with  Orpheus-figures  every  chord  of  the  human 
heart. 

But  as  there  still  be  men  who  believe  the  world  is  flat, 
so  are  there  others,  even  in  this  enlightened  age,  who  take  it 
for  granted  that  a  loving  God  revels  in  the  sweet  incense  of 
sighs,  is  pleased  with  a  paean  of  groans — that  a  beneficent 
Deity  looks  with  dire  displeasure  on  every  bright  oasis 


194  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

Life's  worn  voyageur  finds  between  the  cradle  and  the 
grave.  They  are  preachers  and  teachers  who  have  failed  to 
keep  pace  with  the  procession — who  can  not  realize  that 
religion,  like  all  else  called  into  being  by  the  Creator,  must 
be  progressive.  Poor  preterists,  with  their  faces  to  the  past, 
they  would  repace  every  step  in  the  path  of  human  progress, 
and  across  the  sunlight  of  the  noon  cast  the  shadows  of  the 
night. 

Most  of  these  anti-dancing  dominies  make  uncompromis- 
ing war  upon  the  so-called  evil  in  all  its  forms,  from  the 
stately  minuet  to  the  Irish  jig,  from  the  stomach  contortions 
of  the  Midway  Plaisance  to  the  nervous  "jerks"  of  the 
Methodist  camp-meeting ;  but  the  latest  preacher  to  declaim 
against  the  ballroom  is  not  quite  so  bigoted  as  his  crusading 
brethren.  We  gather  from  the  Galveston  News  that  Rev. 
J.  W.  Lowber  has  been  holding  forth  on  the  subject  in  the 
Central  Christian  Church  of  that  city,  and  some  of  his  pious 
observations  may  be  worth  attention  by  this,  the  ministerial 
organ  of  Texas.  We  approach  him  with  considerable  cau- 
tion, however,  for,  by  whatever  name  they  are  known — 
whether  as  Christians,  Disciples  or  Campbellites — the  mem- 
bers of  that  disorganized  organization  are  great  "  'sputers," 
and  relish  nothing  so  much  as  an  interminable  debate, 
whether  anent  forms  of  baptism  or  the  shortcomings  of 
other  sects.  Parson  Lowber  is  evidently  harboring  the  hal- 
lucination that  when  he  has  eliminated  dancing,  as  now  in- 
dulged in  by  the  sons  and  daughters  of  men,  the  world  will 
be  redeemed  and  the  millennium  due.  Like  the  Prohibi- 
tionist who  approved  of  punch  if  the  spirits  were  left  out,  he 
can  tolerate  dancing  if  each  sex  will  but  indulge  in  terpsi- 
chorean  exercise  by  itself.  He  has  ascertained,  in  some  mys- 
terious manner  which  he  does  not  divulge,  that  when 
Miriam,  the  sister  of  Moses,  tripped  the  light  fantastic  she 
had  no  partner  to  caress  her  patent  health  corset,  and  that 
David,  the  son  of  Jesse,  indulged  in  the  stag-dance.  That 
would  appear  to  most  people  about  as  unsatisfactory  as  a 
single-handed  game  of  baseball  or  a  boxing  bout  with  one's 
own  shadow — pre-eminently  stale,  flat  and  unprofitable. 
Parson  Lowber  has  decided,  in  the  goodness  of  his  heart, 
to  permit  that  kind  of  gayety,  but  when 

"youth  and  beauty  meet 
To  chase  the  glowing  hours  with  flying  feet," 

he  becomes  alarmed  for  the  morals  of  the  community  and 
relieves  Jeremiah  of  his  job.  He  assures  us  that  "if  men 
and  women  will  dance  apart  no  harm  can  ensue."  We  fear 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  195 

the  worthy  parson  is  theorizing  in  utter  ignorance  of  con- 
ditions— that  he  has  never  accompanied  Dr.  Parkhurst  in 
his  nocturnal  visits  to  the  Tenderloin  district,  and  witnessed 
the  can-can  as  danced  for  the  special  delectation  of  doctors 
of  divinity.  Evidently  he  has  never  participated  in  the  hila- 
rious "stag-party,"  observed  the 

"Midnight    shout   and    revelry, 
Tipsy  dance  and  jollity," 

that  characterize  these  gatherings,  and  compared  the  wild 
orgies  with  the  Chesterfieldian  courtesy  and  princely  bear- 
ing of  the  same  men  when  subjected  to  the  mild  censorship 
of  woman's  eyes.  Each  sex  values  the  good  opinion  of 
the  other,  and  right  acting  begets  right  thinking.  The  cor- 
rectness of  this  premise  conceded,  the  conclusion  is  plain 
that  the  good  of  the  race  demands  that  the  sexes  be  brought 
together  as  much  as  possible,  whether  at  work  or  play — that 
it  were  unwise  if  not  unsafe  to  leave  either  to  its  own  re- 
sources. 

Parson  Lowber  assures  us  that  "the  modern  dance  is  a 
great  waste  of  time  and  money."  Perchance  he  has  never 
heard  that  "all  work  and  no  play  makes  Jack  a  dull  boy" — 
has  not  suspected  that  some  preachers  toil  so  hard  to  attain 
a  little  cheap  notoriety  that  they  can  not  comprehend  the 
plain  teachings  of  Christ.  Is  time  expended  in  social  pleas- 
ures really  wasted  ?  Is  it  not  rather  true  that  time  is  wasted 
when  devoted  to  the  attainment  of  wealth  in  excess  of  our 
needs,  to  foolish  dogmatizing,  to  denouncing  a  harmless 
custom  as  old  as  the  human  race — while  children  are  suf- 
focating in  the  slums  of  our  great  cities,  men  are  hesitating 
between  beggary  and  crime,  and  the  face  of  the  world  is 
wet  with  tears  ?  Oh  ye  pitiful  triflers  who  would  be  teachers 
— heaven-ordained  doctors  who  give  a  moribund  world 
bread  pills  to  ward  off  the  Black  Death !  Ye  Davids  of  the 
new  Israel,  are  there  no  Goliaths  of  Gath,  that  ye  must 
stone  sheep? 

These  soldiers  of  the  Lord  who  are  valiantly  charging 
down  upon  the  dance  and  euchre-deck  remind  me  of  a 
hound  with  which  I  once  hunted  wolves.  His  lust  for  blood 
before  we  flushed  our  quarry  was  terrible  to  contemplate, 
and  every  cow  and  calf  along  his  route  was  made  to  feel  his 
fangs ;  but  when  the  great  black  beast  turned  savagely  at 
bay  the  hound  would  neither  bark  nor  bite.  So  some 
preachers  assail  society's  venial  faults  with  fury,  but  when 
the  host  of  hell  stands  forth  beneath  the  blood-red  banner 


196  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

of  Greed,  these  lions  of  the  Lord  ''roar  as  softly  as  suck- 
ing doves." 

Is  money  wasted  when  employed  to  bring  elasticity  to  the 
limb,  brightness  to  the  eye  and  happiness  to  the  heart?  A 
greater  than  Parson  Lowber  has  assured  us  that  "the  spend- 
thrift saves,  the  miser  is  prodigal."  The  man  who  devotes 
every  shining  hour  to  the  service  of  Mammon,  "the  least 
erect  of  all  the  angelic  host  that  fell  from  heaven,"  begrudg- 
ing every  moment  claimed  by  the  goddess  of  Joy,  is  the  real 
spendthrift.  He  squanders,  not  his  substance,  but  his  life — 
turns  his  back  upon  the  fond  delights  of  the  Vale  of  Tempe 
and  wanders  to  the  end  of  his  days  in  the  burning  desert.  I 
fear  that  Parson  Lowber  is  more  pedant  than  philosopher — 
that  he  has  overlooked  the  true  significance  of  life.  While 
doctors  of  medicine  are  beseeching  us  to  abate  that  unre- 
mitting toil  which  wears  out  hand  and  heart  and  brain 
before  their  time,  here  is  a  doctor  of  divinity  reproving  us 
for  every  breathing  spell  in  the  "demnition  grind."  While 
philosophers  insist  that  a  life  ungemmed  with  social  pleas- 
ures is  not  worth  the  living,  here  is  a  preacher  pleading  that 
every  hour  is  "wasted"  if  not  burthened  with  a  care. 

Parson  Lowber  objects  to  the  sexes  dancing  together  be- 
cause it  has,  he  thinks,  a  tendency  to  sensuality  and  is  a 
severe  strain  on  the  Seventh  Commandment.  That  a  man 
should  take  hold  of  a  young  lady's  hand,  touch  her  waist 
with  his  finger  tips  and  guide  her  thro'  the  mazes  of  the 
dreamy  waltz,  fills  the  good  doctor's  head  with  foolish 
dreams  of  a  world  forever  lost  in  the  wild  chaos  of  lust. 
He  has  somewhere  heard  of  mesmerism,  and  fears  the 
dancer  will  exercise  that  strange  power  on  his  fair  compan- 
ion to  her  hurt.  If  he  will  but  reflect  a  little  he  may  con- 
clude that  there's  infinitely  more  danger  in  the  "sitting-down 
waltz"  in  a  darkened  parlor  than  in  the  salutations  of  the 
brilliantly  lighted  ball-room.  Dancing  may  be  of  the  devil, 
but  there  is  no  intimation  in  Holy  Writ  that  the  Prince  of 
Darkness  ever  danced.  He  did  not  cause  the  downfall  of 
Mother  Eve  by  the  "arm-clutch"  or  the  poetry  of  motion. 
According  to  Milton,  Ithuriel  found  him  "squat  like  a  toad," 
distilling  poison  in  the  ear  of  Adam's  credulous  mate, — 
and  we  may  safely  assume  that  most  of  the  wreck  and  ruin 
since  wrought  among  the  gentler  sex  has  been  by  the  quiet 
distillment  of  poison  by  human  toads  in  the  ears  of  confid- 
ing maids. 

The  truth  is  there  is  a  tendency  to  sensuality  in  most 
things  which  minister  either  to  the  physical  or  spiritual  life 
of  men.  Even  that  good  living — of  which  the  average 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  197 

preacher  is  so  fond — inflames  the  passions,  and  the  sacred 
music  which  throbs  thro'  our  great  churches  makes  volup- 
tuaries as  well  as  votaries.  While  it  is  true,  as  Parson  Low- 
ber  points  out,  that  some  girls  trace  their  downfall  to  danc- 
ing, others  attribute  it  to  singing  in  fashionable  choirs  and 
the  hypnotic  influence  of  popular  preachers.  The  ancient 
Greeks  recognized  two  kinds  of  music — that  which  makes 
soldiers  and  that  which  makes  sybarites.  The  savagery  in 
man  may  be  refined  away  by  education  and  religion;  but 
sensuality  grows  with  civilization's  growth  and  strengthens 
with  its  strength.  Generally  speaking,  that  which  tends  to 
make  man  less  a  servant  of  Mars  tends  to  make  him  more 
a  slave  of  Venus.  No  savage  nation  was  ever  noted  for 
licentiousness — that  is  the  curse  of  civilization. 

The  bewildering  beauty  of  a  summer  night's  high  noon; 
the  melody  of  a  half-awakened  mocking-bird  calling  to  its 
mate ;  the  sensuous  perfume  of  dew-bespangled  flowers, 
were  lost  upon  the  savage,  solely  animal ;  but  they  sink  into 
the  supersensitive  soul  like  Cleopatra's  mad'ning  kiss  and 
burn  within  the  blood  with  celestico-infernal  fire.  In 
such  moods — when  the  whole  being  is  ablaze  with  passion, 
half  demoniac,  half  divine — man  climbs  Parnassus'  rugged 
steeps  and  stands,  poised  in  mid-heaven,  like  a  star.  In 
such  moods  the  orator  is  gifted  with  lips  of  gold  and  in  the 
poet's  heart  there  rings  the  melody  of  the  spheres.  In 
such  moods  man  hears  the  still  small  voice  of  Omnipotent 
God  giving  a  new  message  to  mankind,  and  lo!  another 
sacred  book  is  born — another  Mecca  established  as  finger- 
post for  toiling  millions  treading,  with  bleeding  feet,  the 
path  of  Life!  But  not  every  man  may  drive  Apollo's 
steeds  and  safely  guide  the  chariot  of  the  sun.  The  same 
strange  power  that  lifts  man  to  the  highest  heaven  may  dash 
him  to  the  deepest  hell.  Love  that  should  illume  the 
world  may  become  lawless  as  that  of  a  Grecian  god,  and 
Promethean  fire  perverted  is  a  destructive  brand — the  Star 
of  Bethlehem  becomes  a  blighting  thunderbolt  and  man  a 
demon  instead  of  a  demi-god. 

Clearly  we  cannot  exterminate  everything  which  causes 
the  sexes  to  gravitate  to  each  other,  else  were  the  Song  of 
Solomon  hushed,  beauty  banished,  poetry  forbidden  and  the 
grander  rhythm  of  the  great  prose  masters — that  sensuous 
tide  which  bears  us  away  on  its  bosom 

"O'er  the  ocean  wild  and  wide — " 

placed  under  the  ban.  The  great  sun  itself™ that  parent 
and  perennial  store-house  of  passion — were  blotted  from  the 


198  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

heavens,  and  a  lawless  universe  reduced  to  cosmic  dust — go 
floating  once  more  thro'  space  in  snow-cold  purity ! 

Marriage  is  a  good  or  it  is  an  ill.  If  good,  those  things 
which  lead  man  to  choose  a  mate  and  rear  up  sons  to  per- 
petuate his  name,  should  be  encouraged  rather  than  re- 
pressed. If  the  dance  drives  some  to  lawless  love,  it  must, 
in  the  very  nature  of  things,  impel  more  to  matrimony.  If 
contact  of  the  sexes  in  the  waltz,  the  music,  the  mesmeric 
touch  of  hands  and  wild  thrill  of  heart  pulsing  against  heart 
arouse  those  longings  common  to  all  animate  nature,  then 
indeed  is  the  ball-room  the  enemy  of  celibacy  and  the 
builder  of  homes  ;  for  we  must  concede  that  in  a  country  pro- 
fessedly Christian — and  which  sends  missionaries  to  the 
heathen — the  procreative  passion  will  go  right  as  the  rule 
and  wrong  as  the  exception.  I  know  that  it  v/ill  be  urged 
by  some  pseudo-psychologists — who  have  but  a  vague  sus- 
picion of  what  really  ails  them — that  love  and  passion  are  as 
distinct  as  the  daylight  and  the  dark ;  that,  to  borrow  from 
Plato,  there  is  a  Uranian  as  well  as  a  Pandemian  Venus. 
Love  purified  of  all  earthly  dross  is  a  pretty  conception, 
but  it's  a  barren  ideality.  ''Love  is  love  forevermore,"  and, 
refine  it  as  we  may,  disguise  it  as  we  will,  the  basic  principle 
of  that  force  which  draws  the  sexes  together  is  the  procrea- 
tive passion.  When  drunk  with  the  perfume  and  beauty 
of  the  blush-rose  we  think  not  of  the  compost  in  which  its 
roots  lie  buried.  When  the  wine  of  Samos  sparkles  in  the 
crystal  cup,  or  the  must  foams 

"'Round  the  white  feet  of  laughing  girls" 

we  forget  the  mouldering  bones  that  nurtured  the  purple 
clusters.  But  compost  and  bones  are  there,  and  right  well 
the  gardener  knows  that  but  for  them  the  great  white  light 
of  the  moon  and  the  red  glory  of  the  sun  would  beat  and 
break  in  vain — that  the  rose  would  not  enrich  the  vagrant 
air,  nor  the  vine  pour  its  empurpled  tide  into  the  veins 
of  kings.  We  think  not  of  the  Creator's  divine  com- 
mand to  be  fruitful  and  multiply — nor  of  the  method  he  em- 
ploys to  compel  obedience — when,  amid  a  wilderness  of 
flowers,  the  fair  bride  and  gallant  groom  accept  the  sacred 
vows ;  but  the  command  is  there,  and  the  wedding-bells  send 
answer  back — "God's  will  be  done."  The  sexes  must  be 
brought  together  under  circumstances  mutually  agreeable 
ere  Hymen's  torch  be  lit  at  glowing  eyes  and  fanned  to 
flame  with  the  soft  sighs  of  desiring  souls;  so — "On  with 
the  dance." 

Having  formally  taken  the  ministers  of  America  under 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  199 

my  apostolic  protection,  I  feel  that  I  am,  in  some  degree, 
responsible  for  their  errors — that  it  is  my  duty  to  give 
Brother  Lowber  a  little  gratuitous  advice.  If  all  other 
ministers  who  are  denouncing  dancing  and  kindred  social 
customs — whose  significance  they  cannot  comprehend — 
should  hear  and  heed,  so  much  the  better.  I  have  thought 
seriously  of  calling  them  together  for  a  course  of  lectures 
on  the  mortal  sin  of  trying  to  nullify  the  teachings  of  the 
great  Nazarene ;  but  the  time  is  not  yet  opportune. 

Do  not  take  it  for  granted  that  whatever  pleases  the  peo- 
ple originated  in  perdition.  As  the  whole  is  greater  than 
a  part,  so  is  it  wiser.  The  cumulative  wisdom  of  sixty 
centuries — the  customs  of  both  savagery  and  civilization — 
approves  the  dance  as  a  healthy  method  of  diversion.  True 
piety  does  not  consist  in  preventing  other  people  enjoying 
themselves.  If  you  realize  that  you  cannot  indulge  in  pro- 
gressive euchre  without  becoming  a  shoe-string  gambler  or 
bunco-steerer,  or  visit  a  ball-room  without  contracting  an 
uncontrollable  desire  to  see  what  Parkhurst  saw  and  feel 
what  Parkhurst  felt,  just  spread  your  pin-feathers  and  fly 
from  temptation  instead  of  imitating  the  Son  of  Man  by  val- 
iantly facing  and  overcoming  it ;  but  bear  ever  in  mind  that 
in  the  making  of  man  the  Almighty  employs  more  than  one 
kind  of  clay.  Instead  of  wasting  your  strength  trying  to 
abolish  the  ball-room — an  institution  whose  good  equals  its 
evil — turn  your  batteries  upon  those  which  are  wholly  bad. 
Battle  against  Frauds  and  Fakes,  Hypocrites  and  Hum- 
bugs. Assail  Poverty,  Ignorance  and  Crime,  hell's  great 
triumvirate.  When  these  arch-angels  of  evil  are  driven  from 
the  earth  it  will  be  time  enough  to  abolish  the  social  dance, 
burn  the  euchre-deck,  destroy  the  stage  and  protect  the 
Christian  Sabbath  from  "desecration"  by  peddlers  of  hokey- 
pokey  and  popcorn  balls.  Doubtless  the  devil  sometimes 
lurks  in  the  ball-room ;  but  before  seeking  him  there,  oh  my 
brethren,  let  us  be  sure  he  is  riot  snugly  ensconced  in  the 
church,  unctuously  crying  amen  to  the  utterances  of  some 
perspiring  pulpiteer  who  is  trying  to  lead  the  armies  of  Is- 
rael off  on  a  wild  chase  after  some  harmless  jack-o'-lantern 
—while  the  legions  of  evil  overrun  the  earth.  Don't  make 
grand-stand  plays  from  the  pulpit.  Notoriety  may  be  nec- 
essary to  an  actor,  but  does  not  increase  the  sphere  of  use- 
fulness of  a  Campbellite  preacher.  If  you  really  desire  to 
enlarge  the  Lord's  vineyard  so  as  to  include  the  unprofitable 
soil  of  Galveston  Island — and  are  quite  sure  the  Wharf  com- 
pany will  not  seize  the  Ship  of  Zion  in  part  payment  of  the 
dockage — squeeze  the  groans  and  moans  and  chronic  heart- 


200  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

aches  out  of  your  faith  and  fill  it  to  overflowing  with  sun- 
shine and  with  flowers.  Millions  of  tender-hearted  people 
remain  away  from  church  simply  because  they  cannot  bear 
to  witness  the  chronic  gloom  of  those  who  have  made  their 
peace  with  God — the  unhappiness  of  those  poor  creatures 
who  are  doomed  to  inherit  an  orthodox  heaven.  Preach 
that  God  is  love ;  that  our  Father  in  Heaven,  who  watches 
over  the  very  sparrows,  wants  his  children  to  enjoy  them- 
selves even  here  on  earth,  and  gives  the  means  if  they  will 
but  wisely  employ  them.  Teach  the  religion  of  good  liv- 
ing, which  is  also  right  living — the  religion  of  beauty  and 
joy  and  use.  Hitch  your  chariot  to  a  star  instead  of  to  a 
mole,  and  fill  the  land  with  light  instead  of  darkness,  with 
hope  instead  of  despair.  Think  you  the  Creator  poured  his 
splendors  forth  on  land  and  sea  for  eyes  all  dimmed  with 
tears?  that  he  filled  the  bul-bul's  pulsing  throat  with  mel- 
ody divine  and  composed  old  ocean's  never  ceasing  anthem 
for  those  deafened  with  their  own  moans  ? 

I  wouldn't  preach  five  minutes  to  a  man  who  looked  as 
tho'  his  religion  was  hurting  him — who  seemed  sorry  he  was 
going  to  be  saved.  When  I  deliver  the  "glad  tidings  of 
great  joy"  to  a  fellow  mortal  I  want  him  to  act  like  a  poor 
miserable  pariah  who's  just  drawn  the  capital  prize  in  a  lot- 
tery, instead  of  treating  the  message  as  tho'  it  were  a  pro- 
tested draft.  And  when  I  get  thro'  pumping  saving  grace 
into  him  I  want  him  to  go  out  into  the  world  and  add  to  its 
gladness  instead  of  its  gloom.  I  want  him  to  object  to  bear- 
baiting  because  it  hurts  bruin,  and  not  because  it  pleases 
the  boys.  No  matter  whether  I  make  a  Campbellite  of  him 
or  a  sure-enough  Baptist,  I  want  him  to  recognize  a  brother 
Christian  in  every  man  who  is  trying,  in  spirit  and  in  truth, 
to  serve  the  Lord.  And  having  expended  my  time  and  en- 
ergy to  snatch  him  as  a  brand  from  the  burning  and  for- 
mally enroll  him  in  the  army  of  Israel,  if  I  find  that  he's  such 
a  consummate  ass  as  to  keep  blazing  away  with  his  little 
escopeta  at  progressive  euchre,  the  arm-clutch,  the  stage, 
ball-room  and  other  unimportant  social  beetles,  while  the 
legions  of  Lucifer,  with  visors  down  and  spears  in  rest  are 
crowding  us  to  the  wall,  I'll  take  a  club  and  kill  him. 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  201 

THE  A.  P.  A.  IDIOCY. 
DEFAMATION  OF  AMERICAN  DAILIES. 

Perhaps  the  most  ominous  of  the  signs  of  the  times,  so 
far  as  this  Republic  is  concerned,  is  the  birth  of  that  organi- 
zation known  as  the  American  Protective  Association.  True, 
the  order  is  not  formidable  as  yet — is  of  but  little  impor- 
tance in  the  world  of  politics ;  but  history  teaches  that  the 
more  ridiculous  a  craze  or  foolish  a  fad,  the  more  readily  it 
finds  a  following-.  Of  course  the  A.  P.  A.  cannot  long 
survive.  It's  a  child  of  Darkness  and  must  perish  with  the 
coming  of  the  Dawn.  There  is  no  valid  reason  for  its  ex- 
istence, and  the  law  of  social  as  well  as  of  physical  evolution 
makes  it  imperative  that  the  useless  and  unfit  should  perish 
from  the  earth.  So  perished  Know-nothingism,  and  so  will 
pass  this  new  avatar  of  religious  bigotry  and  political  folly 
which  has  found  a  temporary  lodgment  in  a  land  boast- 
ing liberty  of  conscience,  beneath  the  flag  of  the  free.  But, 
though  the  days  of  the  A.  P.  A.  be  few  and  full  of  trouble, 
it  may,  like  the  cholera  scourge,  or  an  epidemic  of  diarrhoea, 
do  an  infinite  deal  of  harm  before  it  is  eradicated.  Its  ten- 
dency is  to  promote  a  religious  war  and  wreck  the  mightv 
political  fabric  bequeathed  us  by  our  fathers,  to  crush  reli- 
gious liberty  and  turn  back  the  hands  on  the  dial  of  time  a 
thousand  years.  Its  avowed  object  is  the  practical  dis- 
franchisement  of  Catholics,  not  only  in  this  country,  but 
throughout  Jhe  world.  The  movement  has  already  become 
"international,"  if  we  may  credit  the  boasts  of  its  leaders, 
which  proves  that  it  was  not  begotten  of  American  patriot- 
ism, as  at  first  pretended,  but  born  of  religious  bigotry.  The 
following  paragraph,  taken  from  the  illiterate  and  intolerant 
address  of  the  president  of  the  supreme  council  of  the  order, 
delivered  at  Milwaukee  last  May,  is  suggestive: 

li  coming  generations  are  to  be  secure  in  the  enjoyment  of  their 
liberties,  we  must  drive  the  enemy  not  from  the  United  States  to 
Canada,  nor  from  Canada  to  the  United  States — not  from  the  new 
world  to  the  old,  nor  from  the  old  to  the  new — we  must  drive 
them  off  the  face  of  the  earth;  must  destroy  the  devil's  brood,  root 
and  branch,  by  the  mighty  power  of  A.  P.  A.ism. 

Think  of  an  "international,"  of  an  "universal  American 
Protective  Association" — of  Americans,  interested  only  in 
preserving  intact  the  liberties  bequeathed  them  by  those 
sworn  enemies  of  monarchy,  the  Revolutionary  heroes,  as- 
sisting the  Czar  of  Russia  to  preserve  his  crown  and  the  Ak- 


202  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

hoond  of  Swat  his  harem!  The  movement  is  not  "Ameri- 
can ;"  it  is  Protestant,  pure  and  simple.  Its  raison  d'etre 
is  religious  instead  of  political.  Its  object  is  not  the  en- 
forcement of  the  fundamental  law  of  the  land,  which  de- 
clares that  "No  religious  test  shall  ever  be  required  as  a 
qualification  to  any  office  of  public  trust  under  the  United 
States ;"  but,  by  uniting  all  Protestant  denominations  in  an 
"anti-Papist"  crusade,  to  "destroy  the  devil's  brood,  root 
and  branch" — to  "drive  them  off  the  face  of  the  earth."  Un- 
less all  signs  be  misleading  and  the  utterances  of  its  duly 
accredited  leaders  mere  doting  jargon,  it  is  the  spiritual 
rather  than  the  supposed  temporal  power  of  the  Pope  that 
is  troubling  the  A.  P.  A.  That  organization  is  warring  upon 
Roman  Catholic  theology  far  more  vindictively  than  upon 
"Roman  Catholic  corruption"  in  politics.  Its  agony  is  fully 
as  great  when  a  Protestant  sends  his  child  to  a  convent 
school  as  when  "Papal  emissaries"  capture  a  municipal  gov- 
ernment. Pat's  sister  in  a  nunnery  gives  it  as  much  con- 
cern as  Pat  himself  on  the  police  force.  It  harangues  with 
far  more  gusto  of  the  immortality  of  some  unworthy  priest 
than  of  the  election  of  a  "Papist"  constable  in  a  Catholic  pre- 
cinct. 

Patriotic  Americans  have  much  to  say  anent  the  necessity 
of  suppressing  such  blatant  anarchists  as  Herr  Most  and 
Lucy  Parsons ;  yet  the  doctrines  enunciated  by  the  A.  P.  A. 
are  infinitely  more  dangerous  to  the  peace  and  perpetuity 
of  the  Republic.  Their  avowed  object  is  the  division  of  the 
American  people  into  two  hostile  classes — and  Christ  as- 
sures us  that  "Every  kingdom  divided  against  itself  is 
brought  to  desolation."  If  this  be  true,  either  the  A.  P.  A. 
or  the  government  born  of  our  fathers'  blood  and  sanctified 
by  our  mothers'  tears,  must  be  destroyed.  If  we  accept 
the  dicta  of  the  Deity  we  must  class  the  A.  P.  A.  organizers 
with  Johann  Most  and  Benedict  Arnold.  Nor  are  these 
enemies  of  the  American  government  willing  to  wait  for  the 
disfranchisement  of  their  Catholic  fellow  citizens  by  due 
process  of  law — the  change  of  the  federal  constitution  by 
peaceful  methods  and  passage  of  a  disabling  act  by  a  fanat- 
ical congress.  They  are  already  preaching  war — a  war  of 
extermination !  Here  is  a  paragraph — clipped  at  random 
— from  the  most  pretentious  A.  P.  A.  journal  extant,  the 
official  organ  of  the  order  at  San  Francisco : 

In  Rochester,  New  York,  a  bad  A.  P.  A.  man  shot  and  killed  a 
good  Catholic.  The  chief  regret  is  that  he  had  not  a  magazine  gun 
instead  of  a  single  shooter. 

A  thousand  similar  expressions  might  be  culled  from  the 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  203 

utterances  of  A.  P.  A.  orators  and  editors,  signifying  that 
the  Protestant  who  murders  a  Catholic  pleases  God  and 
renders  his  country  a  service — that  having  killed  one  Cath- 
olic he  should  be  encouraged  to  slaughter  more.  Evident- 
ly we  would  have  a  delightful  Christian  love-feast  should 
the  A.  P.  A.  become  strong  enough  to  safely  embark  in  the 
wholesale  butchery  business — in  the  name  of  a  loving 
Christ  and  the  federal  constitution!  But  let  an  American 
citizen  who  sees  the  plan  of  salvation  thro'  a  different  tele- 
scope— and  who  has  a  sister  or  daughter  in  a  convent — 
shy  a  brick  at  some  foul-mouthed  blackguard  for  calumniat- 
ing the  Roman  Catholic  sisterhoods,  and  forthwith  a  terri- 
ble wail  goes  up  from  this  "noble  order  of  Christian  pa- 
triots" that  the  Pope  is  trying  to  throttle  free  speech  by 
means  of  a  pretorian  guard  of  brutal  bulldozers.  The  A. 
P.  A.  willfully  and  with  malice  prepense  provokes  the  Cath- 
olic until  forbearance  ceases  to  be  a  virtue,  then  points  to 
his  violence  as  an  evidence  of  Papal  iniquity.  A  large  pro- 
portion of  American  Catholics  are  of  the  combative  Irish 
blood.  The  terrible  injustice  which  Ireland  has  for  centu- 
ries suffered  at  the  hands  of  orthodox  England  has  not  made 
them  particularly  friendly  to  the  Protestant  faith;  yet  so 
deeply  are  they  imbued  with  American  ideas;  such  respect 
have  they  for  the  right  of  free  speech,  that  A.  P.  A.  orators 
and  editors  may  defame  them  in  every  possible  manner — 
may  question  their  patriotism  and  revile  their  religion — and 
do  so  in  comparative  safety.  The  patience  of  the  American. 
Catholics  under  the  jeers  and  sneers,  the  willful  calumnies 
and  cowardly  insults  of  the  A.  P.  A.  has  no  parallel  in  reli- 
gious history  since  the  persecutions  suffered  by  the  primi- 
tive Christians.  Why  they  do  not  procure  a  few  "maga- 
zine guns"  and  fill  the  hides  of  their  persecutors  so  full  of 
holes  that  they  couldn't  be  stuffed  with  stove  wood,  I  am 
unable  to  understand. 

In  the  greatest  exponent  of  A.  P.  Aism — in  which  Pro- 
testant Christianity  and  American  patriotism  are  supposed 
to  be  united  for  the  attainment  of  salvation  here  and  hereaf- 
ter, we  find  such  headlines  as  the  following:  "Pap  for 
Papist  Pugs ;"  "A  Specimen  Catholic  Brute ;"  "Fearful  Ro- 
man Catholic  Immorality ;"  "Papists  and  False  Oaths ;" 
"Jerked  to  Jesus ;"  "Illegitimacy  in  Rome ;"  "Romanists  Lie 
with  Impunity,"  etc., — and  the  articles  are  worthy  of  their 
captions.  Such  is  religious  toleration  and  Christian  charity 
as  interpreted  by  the  A.  P.  A. — such  its  idea  of  the  cult  es- 
tablished by  Christ  for  the  purpose  of  securing  "peace  on 
earth,  good  will  to  men."  The  proceedings  of  every  ecumen- 


204  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

ical  council,  the  official  acts  of  every  Pope,  the  utterances  of 
every  writer  of  Roman  Catholic  theology  for  a  thousand 
years  have  been  scanned  for  evidence  that  the  Mother  Church 
is  the  enemy  of  both  civil  and  religious  liberty — and  that  by 
men  who  would  disfranchise  American  citizens  for  worship- 
ping God  according  to  the  dictates  of  their  own  conscience, 
and  murder  them  with  "magazine  guns"  because  of  a  dif- 
ference of  opinion  anent  the  Real  Presence !  I  am  not  much 
in  favor  of  a  press  censorship  nor  the  abridgement  of  the 
right  of  free  speech ;  but  I  do  think  that  men  who  persist  in 
a  deliberate  attempt  to  precipitate  a  civil  war  should  be 
hanged  for  treason.  My  bump  of  veneration  is  not  so  ab- 
normal that  it  wears  holes  in  the  steeple  crown  of  my  Mex- 
ican hat ;  still  I  hold  that  the  orator  or  editor  who  flagrantly 
defames  and  systematically  vilifies  any  religious  cult  con- 
sidered sacred  by  millions  of  law-abiding  men,  is  a  blasphe- 
mous brute,  and  that  it  would  be  entirely  consistent  with  the 
American  idea  of  liberty  to  clap  a  cast-iron  muzzle  on  him 
and  lose  the  key. 

It  has  been  charged  by  the  A.  P.  A.  that  the  Iconoclast 
is  a  "Baptist  periodical,"  hence  "its  utterances  should  be  re- 
garded with  suspicion  by  all  patriotic  Americans/'  Of 
course  every  journal  that  declines  to  act  as  cat's-paw  to  pull 
political  chestnuts  out  of  the  fire,  for  the  "Ape/'  is  trying  to 
supplant  an  American  President  with  an  Italian  Pope.  I 
am  not  surprised  that,  having  demonstrated  their  ignorance 
of  the  history  of  the  Church  of  Rome  and  their  utter  inabil- 
ity to  comprehend  the  genius  of  the  American  government, 
the  A.  P.  A.  bosses  should  accuse  a  journal  bearing  the 
suggestive  title  of  Iconoclast  of  being  a  "Papal  periodical." 
A  Catholic  Iconoclast  wrere  almost  as  great  a  curiosity  as  a 
feathered  elephant — or  an  English  organization  for  the  pro- 
tection of  American  liberties!  With  the  controversy  be- 
tween Protestantism  and  Catholicism  I  have  no  more  to  do 
than  with  that  between  Buddhism  and  Brahmanism.  I 
care  never  a  copper  whether  a  man  takes  his  theology  from 
the  Pope  or  Dalai-Lama,  John  Calvin  or  Joseph  Smith,  so 
long  as  he  doesn't  persist  in  mixing  it  with  American  poli- 
tics. But  when  one  religious  body  presumes  to  monopo- 
lize the  honors  and  emoluments  of  this  government  to  the 
exclusion  of  another ;  when  an  attempt  is  made  in  the  name 
of  any  religious  cult  or  creed  to  override  the  constitution  of 
our  common  country;  when  a  conspiracy  is  entered  into  by 
malicious  busy-bodies  and  aspiring  demagogues  to  disfran- 
chise worthy  American  citizens  because  of  their  religious 
opinions,  somebody  is  going  to  get  the  iconoclastic  gaffles 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  205 

driven  into  them  so  deep  that  the  protruding  points  may  be 
utilized  as  a  hat  rack. 

But  the  Iconoclast  does  not  stand  alone  to  receive  the 
destructive  thunderbolts  and  sizzling  scorn  of  that  "noble 
order  of  Christian  patriots"  which  proposes  to  play  smash 
with  the  Pope  and  "destroy  the  devil's  brood,  root,  and 
branch" — by  a  combination  of  "open  Bibles"  and  breech- 
loaders. The  leading  article  in  the  A.  P.  A.  Magazine  for 
July — whose  politico-religious  mission  is  ladling  out  a  very 
disgusting  brand  of  'Tap  for  Papist  Pugs" — is  an  "Address 
by  Rev.  J.  Q.  A.  Henry,  San  Francisco."  From  it  I  clip 
the  following  paragraph : 

Time  forbids  that  I  should  give  the  extent  to  which  the  Papacy 
has  subsidized  the  press.  There  is  scarcely  a  daily  of  note  through- 
out the  entire  country  whose  staff  is  not  controlled  by  the  Jesuits. 
At  the  elbow  of  reporter  and  editor  sits  the  Jesuitical  inquisitor  to 
see  that  nothing  is  reported  or  published  detrimental  to  the  Papal 
church.  It  is  shocking  how  unfair  to  Protestantism  and  diabolically 
sectarian  the  press  has  become.  It  cringes  in  the  presence  of  the 
hierarchy,  and  enforces  its  unscrupulous  bidding  with  the  servility 
of  a  whipped  spaniel. 

I  dislike  very  much  to  say  anything  disrespectful  of  a 
preacher;  still,  respect  for  "the  cloth"  does  not  overcome 
my  suspicion  that  the  reverend  gentleman  is  an  unmitigated 
liar.  In  fact  I  know  from  personal  experience  in  daily 
journalism  that  such  is  the  case.  I  have  served  on  nine 
daily  papers — ranging  in  importance  from  the  St.  Louis 
Globe-Democrat  to  the  Houston  Post;  have  occupied  every 
position  from  police  reporter  to  editor,  and  never  did  a 
Catholic  priest  attempt  to  shape  one  sentence  of  the  ten 
thousand  columns  that  have  passed  from  my  pencil  into 
print.  I  have  treated  of  many  questions  in  which  Catholics 
\vere  deeply  interested,  and  never  did  I  catch  a  glimpse  of 
that  "Jesuitical  inquisitor."  Never  did  Catholic — priest  or 
layman — suggest  what  I  should  say  or  leave  unsaid;  but  I 
have  had  the  Protestant  inquisitors  at  my  elbow  often 
enough,  God  knows.  They  have  been  persistent,  meddle- 
some, dictatorial ;  and  whenever  I  declined  to  allow  them  to 
manage  my  department  they  tried  to  get  me  discharged.  In 
all  my  journalistic  experience  I  was  never  told  by  a  Catho- 
lic priest  of  a  scandal  in  a  Protestant  church;  but  just  let 
a  Catholic  priest  go  wrong,  and  four-fifths  of  the  Protestant 
preachers  make  it  their  business,  not  only  to  inform  the 
press,  but  to  insist  that  the  affair  be  "shown  up"  in  its  most 
unfavorable  aspect.  These  are  facts  with  which  every  daily 
newspaper  man  is  familiar.  Call  up  the  editors  and  report- 


206  BRANtt,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

ers  of  this  country  and  they  will  tell  you  that  the  Catholic 
priests  and  Jewish  Rabbis  meddle  with  their  work  but  little; 
but  that,  with  the  possible  exception  of  the  pot-house  politi- 
cians and  crank  scribblers,  the  Protestant  clergy  is  the 
greatest  nuisance  with  which  they  have  to  deal.  That  poli- 
ticians and  monopolists  sometimes  subsidize  a  daily  paper 
is  doubtless  true;  but  this  corruption  is  not  carried  to  the 
extent  popularly  supposed.  The  press  is  often  foolish,  but 
usually  honest.  Of  course  there  are  corrupt  men  on  the 
press,  as  w.ell  as  in  the  pulpit.  I  have  'heard  jackleg  re- 
porters boast  of  tips  received  from  Protestant  preachers  to 
secure  spread-eagle  reports  of  their  sermons ;  but  never  did 
I  hear  either  editor  or  reporter  intimate  that  he  had  re- 
ceived a  dollar  from  a  priest  except  in  the  way  of  legitimate 
business  that  would  bear  the  light  of  publicity.  Of  course 
this  does  not  prove  that  priests  never  influence  the  utter- 
ances of  the  press ;  but  it  does  signify  that  the  preachers  are 
not  in  a  position  to  point  the  finger  of  scorn. 

My  opinion  is  that  the  Rev.  Jeremiah  Querulous  Ana- 
nias Henry  is  guilty  of  a  deliberate  calumny,  and  were  I  now 
editing  a  daily  paper  I  would  have  him  indicted  for  criminal 
libel  and  put  into  the  penitentiary  where  such  reckless  liars 
and  assassins  of  reputation  properly  belong.  Such  a  gratu- 
itous insult  offered  the  American  press  simply  proves  that  I 
sized  the  order  up  correctly  when  I  labeled  it  the 
Aggregation  of  Pusillanimous  Asses.  No  organization 
that  has  undertaken  such  a  herculean  task  as  the  practical 
disfranchisement  and  reduction  to  political  peonage  of  one- 
seventh  of  the  American  people,  will,  if  it  possess  as  much 
sense  as  an  acephalous  louse,  deliberately  antagonize  a  pow- 
er that  can  ridicule  it  out  of  existence,  that  can  drive  it  off 
the  earth  with  goosequills — despite  its  "magazine  guns." 
The  A.  P.  A.  has  taken  plenty  of  rope,  and!  if  it  have  suffi- 
cient sense  to  tie  a  knot  will  inevitably  hang  itself.  And 
the  daily  press  will,  if  it  possess  one  glimmering  spark  of 
American  manhood,  assist  at  the  obsequies.  Here  is  an 
organization  which  has  defied  its  power  and  spat  in  its  face. 
What  will  the  daily  press  do  about  it?  Will  it  play  the 
"whipped  spaniel"  and  lick  the  feet  that  trample  upon  it? 
Or  will  it  hit  this  politico-religious  monstrosity  one  biff  be- 
tween the  eyes  and  send  it  back  to  the  foul  shades  of  hell 
from  which  it  sprung? 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  207 

GROVER'S  NEW  GIRL. 
BABIES  AND  BOOT-LICKS. 

We  gather  from  the  press  dispatches  that  "at  precisely 
4:30  p.  m.  by  the  doctor's  watch,"  on  the  seventh  day  of  the 
seventh  month  of  the  year  of  grace,  1895,  a  third  girl  baby 
was  born  to  President  and  Mrs.  Cleveland.  Regardless  of 
the  Malthusian  theory  of  population — and  the  existence  of 
more  girls  in  America!  than  can  reasonably  hope  to  acquire 
dutiful  husbands — we  hasten  to  extend  congratulations. 
It  is  possible  that  a  male  heir  would  have  better  pleased  our 
"liege,  lord  and  sovereign  born ;"  still,  the  man  who  holds 
three  queens  in  the  game  of  life — with  the  privilege  of  call- 
ing for  cards — should  feel  encouraged.  The  new  addition 
to  the  President's  household  appears  to  have  taken  the 
Nation  by  surprise,  and  it  is  but  now  slowly  recovering  from 
the  shock. 

The  Clevelands  have  evidently  learned  something  by  ex- 
perience. They  have  learned  that  many  daily  newspapers 
have  no  appreciation  of  the  sanctity  of  the  family  circle  or 
respect  for  the  modesty  which  is  the  glory  of  motherhood — 
that  common  decency  demands  that  these  literary  vultures 
and  foolish  Boswells  be  kept  resolutely  at  bay.  Ere  Pres- 
ident Cleveland  had  been  married  six  months,  the  daily  press 
—that  "professional  educator"  and  self-styled  "moulder  of 
public  opinion" — began  to  speculate  on  paternal  possibili- 
ties. It  was  recalled  that  before  becoming  President  he 
had  acquired  a  procreative  record  of  which  he  appeared  not 
a  little  proud,  and  that  he  was  not  a  man  to  weary  in  well- 
doing: hence,  if  by  any  chance,  a  Peeping  Tom  reporter 
caught  a  glimpse  of  Mrs.  Cleveland  clad  in  a  maternity 
gown,  or  even  a  hot-weather  Mother  Hubbard,  the  great 
American  Commonwealth  was  thrown  into  a  state  of  pain- 
ful expectancy  bordering  hysteria.  The  family  physi- 
cian was  beset  by  interrogation  points  wherever  he  turned, 
while  seamstresses  and  house-servants  were  subjected  to 
rigid  cross-examination  by  enterprising  Washington  corre- 
spondents who  should  have  been  humanely  killed.  If  a 
midwife  or  obstetrician  was  seen  about  the  premises  the 
world  was  advised  thereof  by  wire.  If  a  haberdasher's  boy 
delivered  a  p'ackage  at  the  White  House  he  was  fairly 
mobbed  by  reporters  eager  to  learn  if  it  contained  safety- 
pins  or  material  available  for  diapers.  The  physique  of  the 
"first  lady  of  the  land"  was  observed  as  closely  and  com- 


208  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

mented  upon,  as  freely  as  that  of  a  Blue  Grass  brood-mare, 
and  the  slightest  tendency  to  embonpoint  called  forth  col- 
umn telegrams,  editorial  leaders  and  "smart"  paragraphs. 
Speculation  anent  the  probable  sex  of  the  new-comer  was 
freely  indulged  in  by  papers  of  professed  respectability,  'and 
the  approaching  accouchement  became  the  subject  of  con- 
versation alike  in  the  gilded  drawing-room  and  the  dingy 
"doggery."  I  am  told  that  bets  were  laid  on  the  sex  -of  the 
babe  to  be,  and  pools  sold  on  the  date  of  its  debut. 

Time  after  time  the  wiseacres  of  the  press  were  disap- 
pointed, but  that  only  redoubled  their  vigilance.  It  is  said 
that  a  watched  kettle  never  boils;  but  to  even  this  rule, 
there  are  exceptions,  and  the  Cleveland  household  was 
eventually  blessed  with  a  babe — a  fuzzy-wuzzy  little  barba- 
rian, in  no  wise  distinguishable  from  a  thousand  other  babes 
born  on  the  same  day.  But  if  the  little  bundle  of  bawl  that 
lay  mewling  and  puking  in  its  nurse's  arms  h'ad  been  a  rein- 
carnation of  the  Buddha,  or  even  the  Christ — re-born  in  a 
mansion  instead  of  a  manger,  of  pseudo-patrician  instead  of 
unquestioned  proletarian  parentage* — the  American  press 
could  not  have  expressed  more  concern.  Hourly  bulletins 
informed  the  awe-struck  universe  of  the  condition  of  the 
mother,  the  state  of  mind  of  the  father  and  progress  made 
by  the  young*  pilgrim. 

"Baby  Cleveland  awoke  at  11.30  and  wept  softly." 

"The  baby  smiled  intelligently  and  coo-cooed  to  her  happy  f  ather." 

These  are  specimen  bits  of  the  intellectual  goose-liver  pie 
served  up  by  our  journalistic  caterers  to  a  public  boasting 
itself  "heir  of  all  the  ages  and  foremost  in  the  files  of  time." 
What  caused  Baby  Ruth  to  indulge  in  that  soft  wailing  cry 
which  echoed  and  re-echoed  round  the  world  by  wire,  has 
never  been  satisfactorily  explained.  Perhaps  some  faint 
adumbration  of  'an  idea  that,  through  no  fault  of  hers,  she 
had  been  precipitated  into  a  world  where  fools  predominate 
broke  her  heart.  Her  "coo-coo"  remains  as  much  a  mys- 
tery as  her  tears,  the  attempt  of  etymologists  to  prove  it  an 
infantile  form  of  "cuckoo"  having  signally  failed.  By  unre- 
mitting attention  to  duty,  the  doctors  manager  to  save  both 
mother  and  child — even  pulled  the  old  man  through  with- 
out much  difficulty;  but  for  a  long  time  the  general  public 
languished.  The  strain  upon  its  nervous  forces  had  been 
abnormal;  but  the  wonderful  recuperative  powers  of  nature 
at  length  asserted  themselves  and  society  was  safe.  Had 
the  first  Cleveland  baby  been  a  boy,  excess  of  joy  might 
have  proved  fatal  to  a  nation  founded  by  those  who  taught 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  209 

the  equality  of  men  and  held  kings  in  contempt.  Had  it 
been  two  boys  the  sun  would  not  only  have  stood  still  upon 
some  occidental  Gibeon  and  the  moon  in  a  cisatlantic  valley 
of  Ajalon,  but  have  stuck  fast  and  refused  thenceforth  to 
shine  upon  the  other  half  of  the  earth.  That  Mrs.  Cleve- 
land did  not.  die  of  vexation,  nor  the  male  progenitor  of  the 
young  "princess"  go  gunning  for  various  press  correspond- 
ents, "able  editors"  and  other  purveyors  of  such  godless 
gush  over  an  accomplishment  to  which  most  married 
couples  are  equal,  argues  a  patience  beside  which  the  patii- 
arch  of  Uz  were  but  a  querulous  dyspeptic.  The  third  can- 
didate for  colic  and  carpet  tacks  to  appear  in  the  "Stuffed 
Prophet's"  household  was  not  heralded  by  "scare"  head- 
lines. No  pools  were  sold  on  the  day  it  would  appear,  no 
sesterces  laid  by  chivalrous  American  soverigns  on  the 
question  of  its  sex. 

"Silently  as  the  daylight  comes  when  night  is  done, 

And  the  crimson  streak  on  ocean's  cheek  grows  into  the  great  sun," 

the  little  wanderer  from  No  Man's  Land  entered  this  vale 
of  tears  and  unostentatiously  took  up  life's  trials.  The 
sacred  pre-natal  secret  was  guarded  as  closely  as  tho'  it  were 
some  hideous  crime,  lest  the  reporters  once  more  come  pry- 
ing about  kitchen  windows,  "pumping"  garrulous  serving- 
maids  and  listening  at  key-holes  to  catch  the  first  faint  cry 
of  a  new-born  babe.  A  modest  matron  dislikes  to  have  a 
tribe  of  hoodlums  measuring  her  girdle  and  speculating  on 
the  probabilities  of  parturition;  so  it  was  not  until  a  do- 
mestic, finding  the  secret  too  hard  to  hold,  "told  a  neigh- 
bor's girl"  of  the  new  arrival  that  the  press  correspondents 
realized  that  another  crisis  in  the  world's  history  was  at 
hand.  But  although  the  public  was  spared  the  vulgar  spec- 
ulation and  barbaric  horn-blowing  that  preceded  the  arrival 
of  other  babes  "born  in  the  purple,"  it  could  by  no  possible 
precaution  on  the  part  of  the  modest  mother  escape  the  de- 
luge of  post-natal  ditch-water  and  disgusting  hog- wash. 
Kere  is  a  specimen,  clipped  from  that  owl  of  American 
journalism  and  representative  "public  educator,"  the  Dallas 
News : 

Cosy  Gray  Gables  was  batned  in  warm  sunlight  to-day  and  the 
early  existence  of  the  new  Miss  Cleveland,  the  personage  in  whom 
the  residents  of  Buzzard's  Bay  are  most  interested,  is  marked  by 
bright,  pleasant  weather.  Dr.  Bryant  reported  that  Mrs.  Cleveland 
and  the  little  one  are  resting  quietly  and  that  everything  is  progres- 
sing finely.  He  will  add  nothing  except  that  the  newcomer  is  a  "fine 
little  girl."  In  company  with  Joseph  Jefferson,  Mr.  Cleveland  spent 
nearly  all  day  trout  fishing  at  East  Sandwich,  where  Mr.  Jefferson 


210  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

has  a  private  stream.  The  party  left  early  in  the  day  and  did  not 
return  until  nearly  6  o'clock.  Ruth  and  Esther  did  not  drive  with 
their  nurses  to  the  village  this  noon,  as  they  have  done  almost  every 
day  since  their  arrival  at  Gray  Gables,  nor  were  the  horses  sent  to 
the  postoffice ;  but  a  messenger  was  dispatched  on  foot  after  the 
mail.  The  children  remained  at  their  play,  often  chattering  as  they 
ran  about  the  piazzas  and  lawn  over  the  little  sister  so  recently  in- 
troduced to  them.  Both  children  seem  delighted  with  the  idea  of 
having  another  little  one  in  the  household. 

The  existence  of  "warm  sunlight"  on  a  July  day  will 
strike  the  average  reader  as  a  phenomenon  well  worth  re- 
cording— even  wiring  across  the  continent.  Warm  sun- 
light and  wet  water  prove  that  nothing  is  impossible  in  Na- 
ture. We  are  pleased  to  learn  that  the  omens  were  auspi- 
cious at  the  birth  of  the  Cleveland  babe,  portending  pros- 
perity and  a  life  all  whose  paths  are  peace.  Had  one  J.  S. 
Hogg  been  born  while  the  warm  sunlight  gilded  the  pa- 
ternal cabin  with  supernal  glory  and  rested  like  a  benedic- 
tion upon  the  softly  murmuring  pines,  instead  of  in  the 
midst  of  a  March  storm  that  knocked  the  pillows  out  of 
broken  window  panes  and  piled  the  cow-path  with  broken 
boughs  and  general  rubbish  until  it  resembled  an  interior 
view  of  Riggins'  head,  or  the  English  language  after  a  cri- 
minal assault  upon  it  by  "  J.  K.  Street,  journalist" — who- 
ever that  may  be, — what  a,  world  of  woe  and  worry,  trials 
and  tribulations  might  have  been  spared  the  Lone  Star 
State !  That  Dr.  Bryant  declines  to  give  it  further  informa- 
tion than  that  the  babe  may  some  day  wear  bloomers — and 
"everything  is  progressing  finely" — is  the  apology  which 
the  press  offers  the  public  for  not  furnishing  full  particulars. 
The  doctor's  curt  refusal  to  divulge  all  the  delicate  secrets 
of  the  sick-room  to  be  exploited  in  dduble-leaded  type  is 
probably  a  great  disappointment  to  many  people ;  still  it  en- 
titles him  to  the  eternal  gratitude  of  every  mother,  present 
and  potential.  The  same  spirit  of  morbid  curiosity  which 
caused  crowds  to  assemble  to  see  le  Grande  Monarque  dress 
and  undress  himself  largely  prevails  even  among  the  Ameri- 
can people,  where  it  has  been  SO'  prurient  that  the  daily 
press  finds  it  profitable  to  violate  the  canons  of  common 
decency.  That  President  Cleveland  should  almost  immedi- 
ately leave  the  house,  not  to  devote  a  few  moments  to  im- 
portant public  business,  but  to  spend  the  entire  day  trout- 
fishing  in  a  play-actor's  "private  stream"  (where  is  Henry 
George?)  while  his  new-born  babe  was  battling  for  a  hold 
on  life  and  the  mother  far  within  the  pale  of  danger,  would 
suggest  subterbrutishness  to  any  but  a  press  correspondent. 
But  then  we  must  not  judge  by  the  highest  altruistic  stand- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  211 

ard  a  man  who  runs  largely  to  bowels  and  little  to  brains. 
The  gander  carefully  guards  his  unfledged  goslings,  the 
tiger  keeps  watch  and  ward  over  his  pur-blind  progeny, 
but  who  ever  saw  Taurus  take  an  active  interest  in  the  new- 
born bovine? 

But  more  important  than  all  else,  perhaps,  is  the  informa- 
tion afforded  us  by  an  enlightened  public  press  to  the  effect 
that  Ruth  and  Esther  did  not  drive  to  the  village  with  their 
nurses,  as  was  their  wont,  but  remained  at  play,  "chattering 
as  they  ran  about  the  piazzas  and  lawn  over  the  little  sister 
so  recently  introduced  to  them."  (Lindley  Murray  being 
already  dead,  the  architect  of  the  foregoing  sentence  in  our 
"great  public  educator"  cannot  be  indicted  for  homicide.) 
We  might  have  expected  them  to  discuss  Mother  Goose's 
Melodies,  Coin's  Financial  School,  the  latest  society  novel 
and  other  light  literature  adapted  to  nascent  minds.  The 
fact  that  they  preferred  to  talk  of  something  tangible — to 
discuss  conditions  rather  than  theories — proves  that  they 
have  risen  above  that  photoplasmic  or  rudimentary  state  of 
the  mental  faculties  occupied  by  the  Trilbyites,  the  patrons 
of  the  Houston  Post  and  those  semi-vegetable  polyps  who 
absorb  a  kind  of  intellectual  circus  lemonade — with  a  sock 
in  it — from  that  great  tank  of  orthodox  wiggletails  yclept 
the  Baptist  Standard.  We  are  pleased  to  learn  that  Ruth 
and  Esther  approved  of  the  newcomer.  Had  they  decided 
that  it  was  de  trop  of  course  it  would  be  instantly  killed — or 
perhaps  consigned  to  the  tender  care  of  Baylor  University 
to  be  "educated  for  Baptist  missionary  work  in  Brazil." 

We  are  further  informed  that  "the  horses  were  not  sent 
to  the  postoffice,  but  a  messenger  was  dispatched  on  foot 
after  the  mail."  How  fortunate  that  in  raking  the  great 
round  earth  for  rubbish,  the  Associated  Press — that  busy 
collector  of  compost — caught  this  important  item!  Other- 
wise, should  the  world  wobble  in  its  orbit  and  "planets  and 
suns  flame  lawless  thro'  the  sky,"  we  might  never  suspect 
the  reason.  Given  a  cause,  even  Dr.  Burleson  might  figure 
out  an  effect.  We  know  now  that  the  nigger  employed  at 
Gray  Gables  to  go  errands  actually  hoofed  it  to  the  post- 
office  and  "toted"  the  presidential  mail-pouch,  instead  of 
driving — that  he  did  not  even  ride  a  bike  or  bestride  a  brin- 
dle  mule.  Thus  day  by  day  does  the  diurnal  press  add  to 
the  mighty  domain  of  human  Knowledge  and  drive  the 
monster  Ignorance  further  into  the  desert.  Knowledge  is 
power,  if  we  may  believe  the  old  copy-books,  and  the  Archi- 
medean lever  may  yet  move  the  world. 

But  why  criticise  the  press  for  performing  its  legitimate 


212  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

function — 'that  of  industriously  catering  to  a  depraved  public 
appetite  for  toads  ?  If  the  people  did  not  crave  and  pay  for 
such  intellectual  ditch-water  it  would  not  be  collected  at 
great  expense  and  pumped  into  them — much  as  the  Lagado 
doctor  inflated  the  colicky  canine!" 

The  birth  of  babies  in  the  Cleveland  household  is  of  no 
more  importance  than  the  appearance  on  this  planet  of  what 
a  high  official  of  the  present  plutocratic  administration  calls 
"the  spawn  of  the  wayside  cabin" — of  which  Lincoln  was  an 
example.  In  fact,  if  we  may  judge  the  future  by  the  past, 
the  "spawn"  is  likely  to  fill  a  larger  niche  in  this  world's 
economy  <than  is  the  offspring  of  My-Policy  Presidents;  yet 
the  press  of  this  country — where  every  man  is  supposed  to 
be  a  sovereign — indulge  in  more  unmitigated  gush  over 
a  Cleveland  babe  than  does  that  of  Russia  over  the 
birth  of  an  hereditary  Tsar.  In  Great  Britian  when  a 
woman  is  confined  whose  kid,  by  any  possibility  short  of  a 
revolution,  may  come  to  the  crowd,  a  high  state  officer  is  re- 
quired to  attend  the  accouchement,  while  the  people  testify 
their  loyalty  to  the  reigning  family  by  votes  of  thanks — for 
the  unavoidable — and  a  liberal  largesse  to  the  young  prince- 
ling or  dukeling  who,  if  born  in  a  manger  like  the  Man  of 
Galilee,  might  eat  grass.  We  have  not  quite  reached  that 
state  of  intellectual  servility  where  we  pension  the  babes  of 
our  political  boss,  but  are  tending  rapidly  in  that  direction. 
From  the  Penobscot  to  Jim  WelFs  town  on  the  lower  Rio 
Grande,  toadyism  is  rapidly  taking  the  place  of  American 
independence,  and  in  this  respect  at  least  the  public  press 
is  "in  the  vanguard  of  human  progress."  It  is  comforting 
to  reflect  that  there  was  no  typographical  fanfaronade  when 
Shakespeare  and  Burns  were  born — that  Grant  and  Na- 
poleon stormed  their  first  breastworks  without  attracting 
the  attention  of  the  press.  Even  the  coming  into  the  world 
of  the  Immaculate  Son  of  God  was  not  at  the  time  consid- 
ered nearly  so  important  as  the  birth  of  Cleveland's  last 
baby.  But  then  his  Father  was  not  in  politics — did  not  ap- 
point postmasters  nor  dispose  of  public  bonds  to  syndicates 
on  private  bids. 


BAYLOR  IN  BAD  BUSINESS. 

The  case  of  Steen  Morris,  charged  with  outraging  the  14- 
year-old  "ward  of  the  Baptist  church"  while  she  was  an  in- 
mate of  Baylor  College,  has  been  heard  in  the  lower  court 
and  the  defendant  held  to  await  the  action  of  the  grand 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  213 

jury.  It  is  not  difficult  to  predict  the  final  outcome  of  the 
case.  The  complainant  is  a  stranger  in  a  strange  land,  an 
ignorant  child — despite  her  three  years  at  Baylor— deserted 
by  that  pious  crew  of  hypocrites  who  persuaded  her  to  leave 
her  faraway  Brazilian  home  and  commit  herself  to  the  ten- 
der care  of  the  Baptist  church  of  Texas.  The  defendant  is 
brother  to  the  pious  son-in-law  of  Baylor's  president,  and 
all  the  power  and  "pull"  of  that  institution  are  being  exerted 
to  save  him  from  the  penitentiary.  It  is  a  case  of  weakness 
vs.  strength,  of  ignorance  vs.  knowledge,  the  good  name  of  a 
fatherless  girl  vs.  the  reputation  of  a  powerful  denomination 
and  a  pretentious  college.  Antonia  Teixeira  cannot  cast 
a  single  vote;  the  Baptist  church  holds  the  political  destiny 
— and  offices — of  this  judicial  district  in  the  hollow  of  its 
hand.  Of  course  she  may  get  justice — but  it's  a  100  to  I 
shot. 

It  may  be  presumed  that  all  the  important  evidence  for 
both  prosecution  and  defense  was  introduced  at  the  prelim- 
inary trial.  It  simply  amounted  to  an  accusation  by  the 
one  and  a  denial  by  the  other.  No  corroborating  testi- 
mony of  any  importance  was  introduced  by  either.  It  is 
simply  the  word  of  a  child-mother  against  that  of  a  modern 
Joseph.  That  the  girl  acquired  a  contract  to  raise  a  kid 
while  she  was  being  equipped  for  Brazilian  missionary 
work  in  Dr.  Burleson's  kitchen,  and  that  the  party  of  the 
first  part  was  not  a  coon,  as  the  Rev.  S.  L.  Morris,  in  the 
plenitude  of  his  Baptist  charity  tried  to  make  it  appear,  but 
some  lecherous  white  man  who  was  allowed  to  range  at 
will  among  the  female  inmates  of  Baylor,  is  all  that  has  been 
established  beyond  the  peradventure  of  a  doubt. 

Steen  Morris  may  be  innocent ;  but  the  question  naturally 
arises:  If  he  never  had  carnal  intercourse  with  the  child 
why  does  she  accuse  him  of  being  the  father  of  her  illegiti- 
mate babe?  What  has  she  to  gain  by  shielding  the  real 
criminal  and  accusing  an  innocent  man  of  the  terrible  crime  ? 
She  is  evidently  not  seeking  to  recover  pecuniary  damages, 
for  Morris  has  no  money.  She  cannot  expect  to  coerce 
him  into  marrying  her,  for  he  is  already  a  benedict.  Her 
accusation  is  evidently  not  the  result  of  enmity,  for  she  en- 
tered no  complaint  against  him  until  requested  by  the  court 
to  disclose  the  author  of  her  disgrace.  Why  then  did  she 
accuse  the  defendant  and  stick  to  her  story  despite  the  ef- 
forts of  the  Burlesons  and  the  Morrises  to  bluff  and  bully- 
rag her  into  a  recantation?  Men  of  wealth  or  distinction 
are  sometimes  wrongly  accused  of'  sexual  crimes  by  brazen 
adventuresses ;  but  Morris  is  neither  wealthy  nor  distin- 


214  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

guished,  and  it  is  inconceivable  that  a  child  in  short  dresses 
should  learn  to  play  the  adventuress  in  a  Baptist  college — 
or  even  in  Dr.  Burleson's  kitchen. 

Of  course  the  public  may  be  wrong  in  denouncing 
Morris  as  the  guilty  man.  He  may  be  a  veritable  Sir  Gal- 
ahad or  he-Dian.  He  may  be  physically  incapable  of  such 
a  crime ;  or  the  girl  whom  Dr.  Burleson  would  have  us  be- 
lieve was  "crazy  after  the  boys,"  may  have  caught  the  good 
young  man  and  ravished  him  vie  et  armis.  We  really  cannot 
be  certain  of  anything  in  this  world.  The  Iconoclast  would 
not  prejudice  the  case  of  Morris.  It  simply  desires  that 
justice  be  done.  If  he  is  proven  to  be  innocent  it  will 
gladly  record  that  fact;  if  he  is  proven  guilty  it  will  insist 
that  he  be  hanged.  If  he  is  guilty  it  goes  without  saying 
that  there  is  a  conspiracy  to  shield  a  criminal  regardless  of 
the  good  name  of  the  girl,  and  its  principals  should  be  made 
to  feel  the  strong  hand  of  the  law.  Whether  the  child  was 
outraged  or  freely  gave  her  consent  to  carnal  intercourse 
matters  much  from  a  legal,  but  none  from  a  moral  stand- 
point. She  was  14  years  old  when  ruined,  and  at  that  time 
the  law  raising  the  age  of  consent  to  15  was  not  in  effect. 
What  would  be  a  capital  crime  to-day  might  have  been  sim- 
ple seduction  a  year  ago;  still  the  fact  remains  that,  what- 
ever the  law  of  the  land,  a  lecherous  brute  who  will  ruin  a 
child  of  14,  with  or  without  her  consent,  should  not  be  al- 
lowed to  live.  He  should  first  be  subjected  to  the  surgeon's 
knife,  lashed  naked  thro'  the  streets  with  a  whip  of  scorpions, 
then  hanged  higher  than  Haman  and  his  foul  carcass  fed  to 
the  buzzards. 

Whether  Steen  Morris  be  guilty  or  innocent ;  whether  he 
be  convicted  or  acquitted,  Baylor  College  will  have  to  an- 
swer at  the  bar  of  public  opinion  for  its  brutal  and  unchris- 
tian treatment  of  the  Brazilian  girl.  She  was  committed 
to  its  care,  a  child  of  13,  unversed  in  this  world's  wicked- 
ness. She  was  utterly  alone,  and  Baylor  was  to  be  father 
and  mother,  sister  and  brother  to  her  until  she  developed 
into  noble  womanhood  and  was  safely  returned  to  her  kin- 
dred across  far  seas,  consecrated  to  the  cause  of  Christ  In- 
stead of  being  carefully  educated  she  was  consigned  to  the 
kitchen.  Instead  of  being  tenderly  guarded  she  was  per- 
mitted to  become  enciente — it  was  at  first  said  by  a  "coon." 
Instead  of  being  kindly  cared  for  after  this  dire  mishap  and 
an  effort  made  to  bring  her  back  into  the  fold — granting 
that  she  willfully  went  astray — she  was  bundled  out  of  Bay- 
lor like  so  much  carrion  and  never  an  effort  made  to  bring 
her  destroyer  to  justice.  When  compelled  to  disclose  him 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  215 

the  aged  president  of  Baylor  denounced  her  as  a  thief  and 
branded  her  in  the  public  prints  as  a  bawd.  During  her 
confinement  she  was  shown  less  consideration  by  Baylor 
than  is  clue  a  wolf  about  to  become  a  mother — and  she  the 
duly  ordained  "ward  of  the  Baptist  church !"  There  is  not 
water  enough  in  all  the  oceans  to  wash  the  dark  stain  from 
the  escutcheon  of  this  Baptist  college;  there  are  not  words 
enough  in  the  English  language  to  convince  the  American 
people  that  Baylor  is  a  proper  custodian  for  their  daughters. 
The  credit  of  the  Morris  family  may  be  preserved ;  Steen 
may  escape  the  penitentiary ;  the  unfortunate  girl  and  her 
Baptist  bastard  may  disappear  from  the  face  of  the  earth,  but 
Baylor  college  will  stink  forever  in  the  nostrils  of  Christen- 
dom— it  is  "damned  to  everlasting  fame." 


Since  the  above  was  put  in  type  the  defendant  has  carried 
his  case  by  habeas  corpus  before  the  district  judge,  and  that 
official — a  worthy  Baptist  brother — has  rendered  a  Scotch 
verdict  and  ordered  the  release  without  bail  of  the  alleged 
rapist.  One  judicial  tribunal,  after  an  exhaustive  hearing 
of  the  case,  decided  that  the  girl  was  telling  the  truth  and 
ordered  the  defendant  held ;  another,  after  a  cursory  exam- 
ination of  the  matter,  and  without  calling  the  complainant 
to  combat  the  witnesses  for  the  defense,  ordered  that  he  be 
discharged.  So  ends  the  suit.  No  one  will  be  punished 
for  the  ruin  of  Antonia  Teixeira,  the  "ward  of  the  Baptist 
Church."  The  grand  jury  will  understand  that  it  were  use- 
less to  take  cognizance  of  the  case — that  it  will  get  no  assist- 
ance from  her  self-constituted  guardians  in  rounding  up  the 
criminal.  Somebody  is  guilty,  but  he'll  go  scot  free ;  for  in 
the  eyes  of  these  good  people  female  virtue  seems  of  little 
worth  and  lawless  venery  but  a  venial  fault.  Baylor  con- 
siders that  it  has  done  its  duty  by  the  innocent  child  com- 
mitted to  its  care  in  establishing,  to  the  satisfaction  of  the 
court,  not  who  is,  but  who  is  not  responsible  for  her  ruin. 
And .  Waco's  morning  paper — one  of  those  "great  public 
educators" — of  the  Baptist  school — fairly  chortles  in  its  joy 
because  no  one  will  suffer  for  Antonia's  shame — evidently 
thinks  the  debauchment  of  a  child  a  matter  of  little  impor- 
tance which  "prejudice  has  stirred  into  a  great  stink !" 
Right  royally  are  Tom  Ochiltree's  kind  of  men  "standing 
together!"  Well  has  it  been  said  that  there  may  be  much 
religion  and  no  morality,  tomes  of  law  and  little  justice. 
Poor  Antonia !  Miserable  little  waif,  adrift  among  the  Bap- 
tist wolves !  She  can  now  beg  money  of  publicans  and 


216  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

sinners  to  carry  her  back  to  her  native  land,  and  there  lay 
her  ill-begotten  babe  on  her  old  mother's  breast — as  her 
diploma  from  Baylor!  She  can  seek  sanctuary  in  the 
Catholic  church — which  her  fond  parents  left  to  tread  a 
primrose  path  to  Christ — and  there  find  help  and  human 
sympathy;  or  she  can  take  herself  to  the  Reservation  and 
there  pursue  that  "missionary  work"  for  which  three  years 
in  a  Baptist  college  have  so  eminently  qualified  her.  What- 
ever her  future,  the  great  world  will  go  on  much  the  same. 
Dr.  Burleson  will  doubtless  continue  to  "weep  and  pray" 
over  erring  girls — then  pillory  them  in  the  public  press. 
The  Baptists  will  continue  to  send  missionaries  to  Brazil  to 
teach  the  heteroscian  heathen  what  to  do  with  their  young 
daughters,  and  the  godly  people  to  rail  at  prize-fighting  as 
a  public  disgrace — while  Antonia  Teixeira  clasps  her  father- 
less babe  to  her  childish  breast,  bedews  its  face  with  bitter 
tears  and  wonders  if  God  knows  there's  such  a  place  as 
Texas. 


THE  JURY  SYSTEM. 
ANOTHER  VENERABLE  NUISANCE. 

There  is  at  present  almost  as  much  talk  of  reforming  the 
jury  system  as  of  reforming  the  tariff.  Why  ''reform"  the 
jury  system?  Why  not  abolish  it  altogether? 

The  jury  system,  like  the  habeas  corpus  act,  has  long 
been  regarded  as  one  of  the  "great  bulwarks  of  our  liber- 
ties." And  such  it  undoubtedly  was  when  the  greed  of 
princes  and  prelates  threatened  to  grind  us  like  grain  be- 
tween the  upper  and  nether  millstones ;  when  an  absolute 
monarchy  on  one  hand  and  an  intolerant  and  presumptuous 
prelacy  on  the  other  were  trying  to  fix  their  cursed  fetters 
upon  the  brawn  and  brain  of  all  mankind.  When  judiciary 
and  prelacy  worked  together  like  the  upper  and  lower  jaws 
of  a  wild  beast,  of  which  the  harem  of  a  besotted  king  was 
the  stomach;  when  such  creatures  as  Jeffreys  wore  the  er- 
mine and  the  Star  Chamber  and  Court  of  High  Commission 
hung  like  ominous  shadows  over  every  English  home,  then 
.indeed  was  trial  by  jury,  however  defective,  a  thing  to  be 
thankful  for,  to  be  defended  in  the  forum  or  the  field.  Then 
indeed  was  it  the  sheet-anchor  of  liberty,  the  bright  bow  of 
promise  to  the  weak,  the  pillar  of  cloud  by  day  and  of  fire  by 
night  upon  which  the  eyes  of  the  liberty-loving  world  were 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  217 

fixed  with  reverence  and  awe, — the  rock  between  the  tem- 
pestuous sea  of  anarchy  and  the  desolate  desert  of  abject  sla- 
very, upon  which  rested,  with  such  poise  as  it  could,  the  ark 
of  the  social  covenant. 

But  "the  old  order  changeth,  yielding  place  to  new,"  and 
we  have  outgrown  the  jury  system  as  we  have  the  ordeal  by 
fire  and  many  other  forms  and  formulas  established  by  the 
fathers  and  religious  dogma  and  judicial  process.  The 
trouble  is  that  the  old  order  acquires  a  kind  of  prescriptive 
right,  lingers  long  after  the  conditions  which  brought  it 
into  being  have  departed,  after  the  day  of  its  usefulness  has 
declined.  Time  was  when  "sacred  relics"  were  an  invalua- 
ble aid  to  religion,  forming  a  bridge,  as  it  were,  between 
ethnic  materialism  and  the  spirituality  of  the  Christian  cul- 
tus ;  but  having  crossed  the  bridge  it  were  the  part  of  wis- 
dom to  burn  it,  that  we  may  not  return.  A  progressive 
world  must  cast  the  jury  system  behind  it,  as  it  has  cast  the 
Ptolomaic  system,  polytheism,  alchemy  and  augury,  abso- 
lute monarchy  and  many  other  things  once  regarded  as  the 
very  acme  of  natural  or  even  preternatural  prescience. 

The  genesis  of  the  jury  system  is  by  no  means  certain. 
It  first  attained  a  systematic  development  in  England,  but 
whether  its  basic  principle  was  introduced  by  Anglo-Saxon 
or  Norseman,  borrowed  from  the  Gallic-Romans  or  devel- 
oped from  the  native  Celtic  customs,  antiquarians  find  diffi- 
culty in  deciding.  It  really  matters  little  whether  we  are 
indebted  for  it  to  the  semi-mythical  Alfred,  the  legendary 
Hengist,  or  that  mailed  marauder,  William  of  Normandy, 
to  whom  titled  English  nincompoops  and  dead  beats  delight 
to  trace  their  lineage.  Certain  it  is  that  during  the  past  five 
hundred  years  its  development  has  been  in  the  wrong  di- 
rection, and  it  is  not  to-day  so  well  adapted  to  secure  justice 
between  man  and  man  as  it  was  when  Henry  II  permitted 
cowards  to  decline  the  trial  by  combat  for  that  by  assize. 
In  olden  times  the  jury  was  composed  of  the  witnesses,  was 
selected  from  among  reputable  citizens  of  the  neighborhood 
who  were  supposed  to  know  most  of  the  cause  they  were 
called  upon  to  decide,  and  who  might  refuse  to  take  into 
consideration  the  testimony  of  any  or  all  other  witnesses. 
Now  instead  of  selecting  those  who  know  most  about  the 
cause  they  are  to  pass  upon,  we  select  those  who  know 
least.  Instead  of  "afforcing  the  assize"  by  getting  twelve 
good  men  and  true  who  will  agree  of  their  own  accord,  we 
gather  twelve  ignorami  together  and,  after  pumping  law 
into  them  they  cannot  comprehend,  and  surfeiting  them  with 
testimony  which  they  are  incompetent  to  analyze  or  unable 


218  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

to  remember,  we  allow  a  dozen  or  so  shyster  lawyers  to  be- 
fog them  with  their  sophistry,  to  drive  out  what  little  of  the 
law  and  evidence  may  have  found  lodgment  in  their  be- 
fuddled brains,  then  lock  them  up  until  the  most  obstinate 
jackass  in  the  crowd  coerces  the  others  into  submission  or 
drives  them  to  open  revolt! 


In  simple  cases  where  the  law  is  plain  and  explicit,  twelve 
honest  men,  possessing  a  personal  knowledge  of  the  facts 
and  acquainted  with  the  parties  to  the  suit,  may  be  expected 
to  render  a  righteous  verdict ;  but  what  can  we  expect  of  a 
know-knothing  jury,  gathered  by  chance,  where  the  testi- 
mony is  conflicting,  the  interests  involved  are  intricate,  the 
law  ambiguous,  the  attorneys  adepts  in  the  art  of  obfusca- 
tion  and  the  bribe-giver  is  ever  active? 

Even  were  our  juries  always  composed  of  men  of  the 
strictest  integrity,  still  we  might  expect  many  miscarriages 
of  justice.  The  average  citizen  regards  jury  duty  as  an  irk- 
some task  to  be  avoided  if  possible.  He  chafes  under  the 
restraint,  is  in  no  condition  of  mind  to  analyze  great  masses 
of  evidence.  Even  if  he  can  keep  his  thoughts  off  his  neg- 
lected crops,  his  workshop  or  his  store  and  confine  them 
strictly  to  the  cause  in  question,  his  mind  has  had  no  judicial 
training,  and,  with  skillful  attorneys  to  mislead  him,  he  is 
too  apt  to  mistake  the  non-essential  for  the  essential,  or  suf- 
fer his  prejudices  to  be  so  played  upon  that  his  verdict,  while 
conscientious,  is  infamous. 

It  is  safe  to  say  that  five-sixths  of  the  verdicts  rendered 
by  juries  are  compromises — are  not  the  verdict  of  twelve 
men,  but  of  a  minority  who,  being  strong-willed  or  stubborn, 
override  the  majority,  who  are  chiefly  interested  in  getting 
through  with  the  business  that  they  may  receive  their  dis- 
charge. And  this  is  "the  great  bulwark  of  our  liberties — 
the  handmaid  of  justice !"  Why,  the  blundering  of  petit 
juries  long  since  passed  into  a  proverb !  It  is  as  impossible 
to  predict  from  the  law  and  the  evidence  what  verdict  a  jury 
will  render,  as  where  lightning  will  strike,  or  what  fool 
demagogue  the  Texas  democracy  will  next  deify.  About 
the  only  thing  that  can  be  predicted  with  any  degree  of  cer- 
tainty is  that,  if  the  suit  is  against  a  railway  company,  the 
corporation  will  get  the  worst  of  it. 


It  would  be  some  improvement,  doubtless,  to  substitute 
the  majority  for  the  unanimous  rule  in  making  up  verdicts, 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  219 

but  there  would  be  some  loss  to  offset  this  gain.  While 
it  would  rob  the  stupid  and  contrary  blockhead  or  the 
"fixed"  juror  of  his  power  for  evil,  it  would  also  deprive  the 
man  capable  of  rendering  an  intelligible  and  righteous 
judgment  of  his  power  for  good.  While  on  the  one  hand  it 
would  prevent  a  stupid  and  perverted  minority  overriding 
an  indifferent  majority,  on  the  other  it  would  estop  a  wise 
and  judicial-minded  minority  acting  as  a  check  upon  a  blun- 
dering or  vicious  majority. 

The  fact  is,  society  is  becoming  too  complex  for  the  jury 
system  and  we  must  find  a  substitute  therefor.  When  a  na- 
tion is  composed  of  but  few  people  they  can  all  assemble  in 
council  and  make  laws ;  but  when  they  become  numerous, 
and  national  interests  complex,  pure  democracy  must  give 
place  to  representative  government  or  monarchy.  In  a 
small  State  every  freeman  may  properly  be  expected  to  be 
soldier  as  well  as  citizen;  but  when  the  hundreds  swell  to 
millions,  division  of  labor  and  greater  proficiency  in  each 
department  becomes  possible.  It  is  as  foolish  to  expect 
every  citizen  to  leave  his  farm  and  workshop  to  enforce  the 
law  as  it  is  to  expect  him  to  assist  directly  in  the  making  of 
those  laws,  or  to  take  his  turn  at  garrisoning  frontier  forts. 

If  we  can  trust  delegates  to  make  our  laws  certainly  we 
may  trust  delegates  to  enforce  them.  If  we  can  trust  to 
judges  alone  in  our  courts  of  last  resort,  cannot  we  trust  to 
them  also  in  the  lower  courts?  If  it  be  objected  that  such  a 
system  would  lead  to  favoritism  and  abuses;  if  the  jury  sys- 
tem has  such  a  hold  upon  the  popular  fancy  that,  despite  its 
many  shortcomings,  its  immediate  overthrow  would  be  im- 
possible, why  not  elect  our  jurors  and  pay  them  as  we  do 
our  magistrates  and  county  boards?  There  is  no  magic 
in  the  number  twelve,  five  or  seven  would  answer  equally 
as  well.  The  majority  rule  in  making  up  verdict  might  be 
adopted  and  each  juror's  vote  made  a  matter  of  record.  We 
could  thus  secure  the  services  of  men  of  more  than  average 
intelligence  and  moral  standing,  with  some  little  qualifica- 
tion for  the  work,  fix  the  responsibility  of  verdicts  and  save 
to  the  general  public  a  vast  deal  of  worry  and  waste  of  time. 
It  would  be  vastly  cheaper  to  the  commonwealth,  trials 
would  be  briefer,  fewer  useless  witnesses  would  be  summon- 
ed and  lawyers  would  soon  learn  it  to  be  but  a  waste  of  lung 
power  to  indulge  in  cheap  sophistry  and  Ciceronian  fanfar- 
onade. While  a  bench  of  trained  judges,  holding  their 
positions  for  life,  and  liberally  paid,  would  be  the  best  pos- 
tible  tribunal,  if  we  must  retain  the  jury  system  let  us  effect 
a  division  of  labor  and  fix  upon  jurors  some  little  responsi- 


220  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

bility.  Let  us  put  men  in  the  jury  box  who  at  least  know 
a  hawk  from  a  handsaw,  men  who  freely  accept  the  service 
instead  of  those  who  are  driven  into  it  by  fear  of  fine  and 
imprisonment. 


POLITICIANS  AND  PENSIONERS. 

I  was  conversing  with  a  hardy-looking  machinist  in 
Houston  who  incidentally  remarked  that  he  had  served  in 
the  federal  army  during  the  civil  war. 

"How  long?" 

"Only  about  six  months.  I  enlisted  near  the  close  and 
never  got  to  see  a  Johnny  with  his  war-paint  on." 

"Get  a  bounty  when  you  enlisted?" 

"Oh,  yes ;  I  got  $300." 

"Ever  try  to  get  a  pension"? 

"Sure!  I  was  taken  sick  of  the  mumps  and  permanently 
disabled." 

"Disabled  for  what"? 

"Well,  you  see,  my  general  health  was  impaired.  I  only 
draw  $6  a  month,  but  I'm  trying  to  get  an  increase." 

The  conversation  drifted  to  other  topics  and  he  finally 
informed  me  that  he  was  the  parent  stem  from  which  had 
sprung  twelve  lusty  olive  branches. 

"Raise  your  family  since  the  war?" 

"Sure."' 

"Work  at  your  trade  regularly  ?" 

"Haven't  lost  a  month's  time  in  ten  years." 

"Now,  hones'  Injun,  don't  you  think  that  a  man  who 
came  out  of  the  war  capable  of  continued  hard  labor  and  of 
incidentally  accumulating  a  dozen  kids,  has  a  good  deal  of 
gall  to  ask  the  Government  to  pay  him  a  pension"? 

"Well,  congress  allowed  it,  and  I'd  be  a  d — n  fool  to  re- 
fuse $72  a  year  that's  thrown  at  my  head." 

A  few  years  after  the  war  I  witnessed  a  six-day  walking 
match  and  subsequently  learned  that  the  winner  was  draw- 
ing a  comfortable  pension  from  Uncle  Sam  because  of  a  dis- 
abled leg!  A  careful  investigation  would  probably  disclose 
the  fact  that  fully  forty  per  cent  of  the  ex-federals  now  re- 
ceiving pensions  came  out  of  the  war  better  men  physically 
than  they  went  in.  The  pension  legislation  indulged  in  by 
that  omnium-gatherum  of  practical  politicians  and  profes- 
sional jobbers  yclept  the  American  Congress,  is,  beyond 
the  peradventure  of  a  doubt,  the  most  damnable  outrage 
ever  perpetrated  on  a  free  people. 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST.  221 

The  Republican  party  sets  the  pace  in  the  matter  of  pen- 
sion legislation — in  pandering  to  the  "old  soldier  vote" — 
and  its  Democratic  brother  considers  that  it  must  follow 
suit  if  it  would  keep  its  nose  within  smelling  distance  of  the 
public  flesh-pots.  The  leaders  of  both  parties  take  it  for 
granted  that  the  old  soldier  can  be  held  in  line  only  by  lib- 
eral concessions  of  public  pap— -that  the  moment  a  subsidy 
is  denied  him  he  will,  like  a  political  mercenary,  transfer  his 
allegiance  to  the  cause  of  the  enemy.  As  in  several  states 
he  holds  the  balance  of  power,  his  vote  is  important ;  hence 
we  have  the  edifying  spectacle  of  Democratic  and  Republi- 
can congresses  viemg  with  each  other  in  the  building  of  new 
turn-pikes  upon  which  he  may  travel  to  the  treasury. 

General  Grant  declared  that  twenty-five  years  after  the 
close  of  the  war  the  pension  expenditures  should  not  ex- 
ceed $50,000,000  per  annum ;  yet  here  it  is  30  years  since  the 
cessation  of  hostilities,  and  the  expenditures  are  three  times 
the  sum  named  as  the  maximum  by  the  federal  commander ! 
Men  who  followed  .the  flag  of  the  confederacy  are  fully  as 
liberal  with  the  public  funds  when  bidding  for  the  votes  of 
ex-federals  as  are  the  most  radical  of  Republicans. 

It  is  well  enough  to  grant  pensions  to  those  who  were  per- 
manently disabled  in  the  discharge  of  their  duties  and  who 
possess  no  means  of  support ;  but  this  promiscuous  pension- 
ing for  political  purposes  is  not  only  an  infamous  outrage 
upon  the  taxpayers,  but  an  insult  to  patriotism.  The  pay 
of  the  federals,  rank  and  file,  was  far  in  excess  of  that  re- 
ceived by  the  soldiers  of  any  European  country.  In  addi- 
tion to  this,  many  received  a  liberal  bounty.  If  a  man  will 
not  fight  for  his  country  or  defend  his  home  for  a  salary, 
with  a  subsidy  annex,  without  asking  to  be  provided  for  all 
the  rest  of  his  life  at  public  expense,  his  patriotism  is  con- 
siderably below  par. 

I  do  not  believe  that  the  federal  soldiers  who  faced  the 
legions  of  Jackson  and  Lee  are  asking  to  be  listed  as  chronic 
paupers — that  the  men  who  "saved  the  country"  insist  on 
taking  it  in  part  payment  of  their  services,  then  compelling 
us  to  work  out  the  balance.  It  is  the  men  who  "enlisted 
near  the  close  of  the  war" — when  the  bounties  were  big- 
gest and  the  draft  hardest  to  dodge;  who  "never  saw  a 
Johnny  with  his  war-paint  on;"  who  were  "permanently 
disabled  by  the  mumps" — then  founded  large  families — and 
those  who  became  professional  pedestrians  on  pensioned 
legs,  that  consfder  patriotism  and  pie  as  synonyms  and  hold 
the  tear  jug  into  which  practical  politicians  ostentatiously 
weep  for  the  woes  of  the  "old  soldier." 


222  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST. 

The  confederate  soldier  suffered  far  more  severely  than 
did  his  federal  brother.  In  addition  to  catching  the  mumps 
and  getting  disabled  legs  he  got  his  house  burned  down, 
his  mules  stolen  and  his  niggers  confiscated.  He  received 
no  fat  bounties  and  'never  saw  a  greenback  except  when  he 
went  through  the  pockets  of  some  federal  prisoner.  He 
drew  the  enemy's  fire  with  a  great  deal  more  regularity  than 
he  drew  his  pay,  and  when  he  got  the  latter  it  was  good  for 
little  but  gun-wadding  and  pastime  poker ;  yet  he  has  man- 
aged pretty  well  without  a  pension — has  even  contributed 
some  hundreds  of  millions  toward  ameliorating  the  mental 
anguish  of  his  erstwhile  enemy. 

The  confederates  were  not  playing  the  game  of  war  for 
pensions.  They  did  not  consider  the  Confederacy  a  cas- 
ualty insurance  company.  Some  fought  as  a  matter  of 
duty,  some  for  the  fun  of  the  thing,  and  a  few,  perhaps,  be- 
cause they  couldn't  help  it ;  but  none  of  them,  so  far  as 
heard  from,  have  threatened  to  spill  their  patriotism,  re- 
nounce their  political  principles  and  kick  the  enacting  clause 
out  of  their  party  unless  it  filled  them  to  the  nozzle  with  pie 
at  the  expense  of  the  public.  What  little  has  been  done 
by  the  respective  states  for  disabled  and  impecunious  vet- 
erans was  unsolicited.  The  old  confeds  have  never  threat- 
ened to  ruin  a  political  party  unless  it  assisted  them  to  rob 
the  country.  Their  patriotism  is  not  built  on  a  gold  basis 
like  the  American  greenback,  but  is  purely  a  fiat  affair. 


TRUE  LOVE'S  TRIALS. 

Miss  Rebecca  Merlindy  Johnson,  Assistant  Editor  Houston   Post : 

My  Dear  Rebecca:  It  has  been  some  months  since  I 
took  my  pen  in  hand  to  spill  my  fond  affection  over  the 
fairest  of  the  fair,  my  sweet  Rose  of  Sharon.  During  this 
hiatus  in  our  communion  thro'  the  mails  you  have  evidently 
imagined  that  my  heart  has  become  frappe — even  harbored 
the  awful  hallucination  that  in  the  rush  and  hurry  of  reform- 
ing the  Texas  ministry,  squeezing  the  politics  out  of  latter 
day  religion  and  promoting  harmony  in  the  bifurcated  de- 
mocracy, I  have  actually  forgotten  you.  I  gather  as  much 
from  the  fact  that  you  inform  the  few  unfortunate  readers 
of  the  Post  that  I'm  a  bold  bad  man,  an  "adventurer,"  an 
"ingrate,"  and  other  things  not  calculated  to  inspire  respect. 
This  only  proves  the  old  adage  that  the  path  of  true  love 
is  ever  a  rocky  one,  beset  with  thorns  and  thistles,  as  well 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  223 

as  rosebuds  and  bulbuls.  You  know  you  wronged  me  when 
you  made  those  cruel  flings.  You  suspected  that  I  had 
transferred  my  affections  to  Dr.  Mary  Walker — and  "hell 
hath  no  fury  like  a  woman  scorned."  You  were  wretchedly 
unhappy  and  longed  to  be  bitterly  cruel.  If  I  ever  sinned 
against  your  youth  and  innocence  it  must  have  been  in  an 
uneasy  hypnotic  dream.  Before  gods  and  men  I  do  declare 
that  if  you  have  been  led  astray — if  your  young  life  is 
blighted  like  a  tender  plant  by  a  sneaping  frost — 'tis  no 
fault  of  mine.  If  you  have  been  guilty  of  unwomanly  con- 
duct, God  wotteth  well  it  was  despite  my  counsels  rather 
than  because  thereof.  If  your  conscience  hurts  you,  and 
in  the  stilly  night  there  comes  into  your  exuberant  bosom 
a  feeling  that's  akin  to  pain ;  if  you  bedew  your  hen-feather 
pillow  with  unavailing  tears  while  Remorse  fleshes  his 
cruel  fangs  in  your  broken  heart  and  makes  it  to  bleed 
afresh,  why  lay  the  burden  of  the  blame  on  one  who  gently 
held  you  back  by  the  tail  of  your  little  alpaca  coat  when  you 
yearned  to  fill  your  snowy  cuticle  with  barrel-house  booze 
and  whoop  it  up  in  Happy  Hollow?  Jealousy  is  indeed  a 
green-eyed  monster,  that  makes  us  see  things  more  strange 
than  ever  flitted  hither  and  yon  in  a  jag-cure  joint.  "Ingrate" 
I  may  be,  for  I  should  not  have  left  a  maid  so  fair  and  way- 
ward in  a  town  with  Epictetus  Paregoric  Hill  and  Uncle 
Dan  Gary,  with  none  to  keep  watch  and  ward.  When  she 
poured  out  to  me  the  wealth  of  her  fond  affection  I  should 
have  stayed  ever  by  it  to  see  that  it  did  not  sour.  Still  I 
felt  my  duty  done  when  I  found  you,  a  poor  green  gosling 
in  the  newspaper  pasture,  and  played  the  part  of  a  guide, 
philosopher  and  friend  until  you  developed  into  a  full- 
fledged  goose.  Perhaps  I  have  been  derelict,  for  the  rela- 
tions of  man  and  woman  are  so  delicate  that  it  is  indeed 
hard  to  draw  the  line  where  duty  ends  and  generosity  be- 
gins. Still,  to  err  is  human,  to  forgive  divine,  and  I  beg 
that  Rebecca  the  beauteous  will  pass  my  imperfections  by. 
In  these  lovers'  quarrels,  which  will  arise  from  time  to  time, 
like  ominous  clouds  in  a  summer's  sky,  you  should  not  ex- 
pect me  to  do  all  the  forgiving,  for  monopolies  are  con- 
trary to  law.  The  fact  is,  Rebecca,  I  have  been  compelled 
by  cruel  circumstances  entirely  beyond  my  control  to  forego 
the  pleasure  of  feeding  you  with  the  usual  allowance  of 
compressed  pansy  blossoms  and  anacreontic  poetry.  I  have 
already  ravished  the  gardens  of  the  gods  of  every  fragrant 
flower  to  lay  at  your  wayward  feet — -have  even  despoiled 
weald  and  wold  of  straggling  blooms  and  woven  them  into 
garlands  with  which  to  crown  you  Queen  of  the  Liars'  Club. 


224  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

There  is  not  even  a  pale  pink  holly-hock  left  blooming  alone 
in  some  deserted  garden,  or  hexapetalous  jimson  waving 
its  wild  glories  above  a  pile  of  compost  that  can  be  added 
to  your  triumphal  arch  or  entwined  in  a  magic  cestus  for  my 
fin  de  siecle  Venus.  I  have  overworked  my  muse  in  an  ef- 
fort to  paint  the  lily  and  gild  refined  gold,  exhausted  the 
lover's  dictionary  in  showering  sweets  to  the  sweet  and  can 
only  stand,  like  another  Troilus,  on  some  beetling  rampart 
beneath  the  twinkling  Pleiades,  make  mouths  at  the  harvest 
moon  and  sigh  my  soul  out  toward  the  distant  camp  where 
fair  Cressid  lies,  lulled  to  peaceful  dreams  by  the  drowsy 
bleat  of  the  goat  editor  and  soporific  hum  of  the  busy  gal- 
linipper.  I  must  wait  for  new  flowers  of  fancy  to  bloom  in 
the  arid  waste,  for  Orpheus  to  mend  his  lute  and  Pegasus  to 
rest  his  weary  wings.  Forgot  you,  Rebecca?  As  the 
French  novelists  say  when  waiting  for  an  idea,  "Ah  God !" 
What  impressionable  son  of  Adam,  having  once  feasted  his 
hungry  eyes  on  your  sylph-like  form;  what  mortal  man, 
having  once  been  awed  and  quite  o'ercome  by  your  statu- 
esque, she-Napoleonic  pose,  and  gazed  into  the  dreamy 
depths  of  your  bovine  eyes — those  wonderful  windows  of 
the  soul  thro'  which  it  peers  forth  with  all  the  unutterable 
longing  and  aching  tenderness  of  a  bull-calf  contemplating 
a  dewy  clover-patch  thro'  a  pair  of  bars — could  efface,  even 
with  a  bath-brick  and  elbow  grease,  that  matchless  vision 
from  his  memory !  But  it  is  not  of  love  and  love's  rap- 
tures I  here  would  speak.  It  is  of  matters  less  pleasant  than 
yum-yum  beneath  the  umbrageous  boughs  of  a  china-tree 
while  the  fragrance  of  the  bayou  comes  stealing  around  the 
trysting  Pyramus  and  Thisbe  like  a  benediction,  that  chiefly 
concerns  us  here.  The  "New  Woman"  craze  which  you 
have  precipitated  on  this  unhappy  land  is  to-day  the  burden 
of  my  song.  What  evil  and  unwomanly  spirit  induced  you 
to  cast  aside  flowing  skirts  and  health-bustles,  beflowered 
hats  and  French  heels  and  appear  in  public  places  in  split- 
tail  coat  and  pantaloons?  How  came  you  to  exchange  the 
modest  name  of  Rebecca  Merlindy  for  the  bellicose  pseudo- 
nym of  Rienzi  Miltiades?  Did  you  not  understand  that 
such  an  example  was  calculated  to  utterly  demoralize  your 
sex?  Already  a  goodly  portion  of  the  great  she- world  has 
taken  to  derby  hats,  shirt-waists  and  bloomers.  Encouraged 
by  your  almost  criminal  recklessness,  the  softer  sex  becomes 
year  by  year  more  masculine,  more  inclined  to  don  the 
breeches  and  transpose  the  "obey"  clause  in  the  marriage 
contract.  You  dabbled  in  politics — or  tried  to — and  forth- 
with the  woods  were  filled  with  Mary  Ellen  Leases,  You 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  225 

wrote  for  the  papers — by  proxy,  of  course — and  half  your 
sex  contracted  an  incurable  case  of  cacoethes  scribendi.  You 
went  on  the  stage  and  played  Claude  Melnotte  to  Mrs.  Jane 
Brown  Potter's  Pauline,  and  now  all  the  she-stars  of  the 
theatrical  firmament  want  to  "do"  male  parts  and  stride 
about  the  painted  rocks  and  "set"  trees  in  white  tights  and 
top  boots.  You  insisted  upon  voting,  although  you  knew 
less  of  political  economy  than  does  a  prohibition  orator,  and 
forthwith  the  dear  creatures  became  clamorous  for  political 
privileges,  and  one  of  them  actually  hoisted  a  presidential 
lightning-rod.  Your  example,  Rebecca,  has  bred  a  train 
of  ills,  whose  culmination  even  the  wisest  philosopher  cannot 
foresee.  Indirectly  you  are  responsible  for  the  bicycle 
habit  which  has  the  beauty  of  America  in  its  remorseless 
grasp.  True,  you  do  not  ride  a  bike  yourself,  your  legs 
not  being  long  enough  to  reach  the  treads,  nor  your  dignity 
of  that  kind  which  can  be  safely  trusted  on  rubber  wheels ; 
but  other  women,  whose  physical  construction  is  more  con- 
servative, mount  the  erratic  machine,  light  their  cigarettes 
and  go  whizzing  by,  dazzling  we  poor  he-things  \vith  the 
twinkle  of  their  Trilby  feet.  You  doubtless  think  it  all  a 
joke,  Rebecca  mine;  but  it  is  a  jest  that  may  prove  a  boom- 
erang and  knock  you  off  the  social  Christmas  tree.  You 
have  carried  it  too  far  and  must  suffer  the  consequences. 
Had  you  donned  a  pair  of  breeches  measuring  14  inches  in 
the  leg  and  75  in  the  beam  and  slipped  out  on  a  dark  night 
for  a  quiet  lark  with  Dud  Bryan,  Will  Bailey  and  Whistle- 
trigger,  you  would  have  done  little  harm ;  but  such  costume 
continually  worn  in  the  garish  light  of  day  by  a  gentle  maid 
who  should  be  spinning  her  marriage  linen  and  dreaming 
of  orange  blossoms  and  epithalamiums,  is  a  bid  for  adverse 
remark.  Already  it  is  whispered  that  you  are  not  a  woman 
at  all,  but  just  a  dapper  little  man  to  whom  heaven  has 
denied  the  glory  of  a  beard  and  masculine  strength  o^f  mind. 
The  world  is  so  prone  to  judge  by  appearances,  and  when 
made  up  you  do  look  a  very  little  like  a  man  in  some  re- 
spects. Think  of  a  young  and  beautiful  woman  suspected 
of  being  only  a  he-thing  at  a  time  when  the  ladies  are  taking 
the  destiny  of  the  world  into  their  hands !  Imagine  one  who 
was  born  to  rule,  being  classed  with  those  miserable  worms 
of  the  dust  who,  in  the  years  to  be,  will  watch  the  baby  and 
crochet  tidies  while  their  female  lords  are  sitting  with  feet 
cocked  up  in  front  of  swell  hotels,  saving  the  country  and 
ogling  the  Josephs  who  saunter  timidly  by !  But  that  is  not 
all— it  is  not  half.  It  is  even  darkly  hinted  that  you  are 
neither  male  nor  female,  but  a  peculiar  and  eminently  un- 


226  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

satisfactory  combination  of  both.  To  such  ribaldry,  fair 
Rebecca,  does  your  clothing-store  and  gin  sling  habit  sub- 
ject you.  And  to  think  that  I  cannot  come  to  your  rescue 
—that  it  is  one  of  those  aggravating  cases  wherein  a  doting 
swain  must  listen  to  the  most  preposterous  speculation 
anent  the  idol  of  his  affection  and  hold  his  peace — lest  he 
make  a  bad  matter  worse!  I  can  only  confide  these  facts 
to  you,  trusting  that  womanly  tact  will  teach  you  the  neces- 
sity of  turning  to  the  wall  your  portrait  in  the  gallery  of 
gold-cure  graduates,  and  adopting  some  more  feminine  oc- 
cupation than  chewing  plug  tobacco  and  spitting  at  a  mark 
— that  you  will  once  more  go  into  your  raiment  head  first. 
I  do  not  chide  you,  Rebecca.  I  realize  full  well  that  you 
are  a  good  girl  at  heart;  but  "evil  communications  corrupt 
good  manners."  There  is  yet  hope.  Mary  Magdalen  re- 
formed and  Trilby  tried  to— tho'  it  killed  her.  That  latter 
fact  should  caution  you  to  go  at  your  work  of  reformation 
scientifically,  but  none  the  less  determinedly.  Will  you  do 
so,  for  the  sake  of  the  APOSTLE. 


JINGOES  AND  JOHN  BULL. 

ANGLO-MANIACS  vs.  AMERICANS. 

The  brutal  treatment  accorded  the  Cornell  crew  in  Eng- 
land is  enough  to  make  the  blood  of  every  true  American 
boil,  and  that  so  hotly  that  Johnny  would  be  compelled  to 
get  his  gun,  and  get  it  p.  d.  q.  Still  the  case  does  not  ma- 
terially differ  from  that  of  a  dozen  others  that  preceded  it. 
It  is  notorious  that  whenever  American  athletes  cross  the 
briny  to  try  conclusions  with  our  British  cousins  they  are 
flagrantly  insulted,  systematically  robbed  and  not  infre- 
quently mobbed  by  a  people  posing  as  the  very  avatar  of 
fair  play.  Ever  since  the  Benicia  Boy  put  it  all  over  the 
British  champion — then  had  to  lick  a  job-lot  of  high-toned 
toughs — the  more  or  less  "noble  Briton"  has  missed  no  op- 
portunity to  belittle  and  belie,  blackguard  and  bully-rag  the 
American  athlete  who  chanced  to  be  his  guest.  Time  and 
again  it  has  been  demonstrated  that  he  has  as  little  concep- 
tion of  the  courtesy  due  a  stranger  within  his  gates  as  has  a 
hyena  of  hospitality.  He  boasts  of  his  civilization  and 
sneers  at  Uncle  Sam  as  a  semi-savage ;  yet  our  very  Bowery 
toughs  and  Boiler  avenue  bums  will  treat  a  brave  adversary 
with  more  consideration  than  will  the  lordlings  and  duke- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  227 

lings  of  Great  Britain.  I  do  not  say  this  to  disparage  the 
English  people;  I  simply  record  it  as  a  melancholy  fact 
which  has  been  too  frequently  demonstrated  to  permit  of 
denial.  So  brutally  inhospitable  are  the  people  and  press 
of  England  to  American  athletes,  that  Corbett — who  is  not 
particularly  thin-skinned — declares  that  Peter  Jackson  is 
the  only  pugilist  he  will  consent  to  meet  on  British  soil.  As 
the  latter  is  a  "coon,"  Corbett  might  hope  to  fairly  defeat 
him  and  escape  being  mobbed  by  the  ring-side  roughs  such 
as  the  conqueror  of  Savers  had  to  contend  with ;  tho'  he 
realizes  full  well  that  the  sympathies  of  England  would  be 
with  the  Ethiopian — just  as  they  would  be  "with  the  devil 
were  the  prince  of  darkness  pitted  against  an  American 
pugilist. 

Unquestionably  some  grand  and  noble  men  have  been 
bred  in  England — men  who  would  do  honor  even  to 
America ;  but  the  tight  little  isle  has  an  undue  proportion  of 
plug-uglies  and  prigs,  blackguards  and  bullies. 

In  boxing  and  wrestling,  in  rowing  and  running  America 
has  repeatedly  demonstrated  her  superiority;  but  this  fact 
does  not  fully  explain  why  her  athletes  are  so  inhospitably 
treated  in  England.  John  Bull's  chronic  belly-ache  dates 
far  back  of  Sayer's  defeat  by  the  Benicia  Boy — it  can  be 
traced  to  the  Boston  Tea  Party  and  Bunker  Hill.  The  royal 
beast  of  Britain  has  never  forgotten  that  once  upon  .a  time 
an  infant  Republic  held  him  up  by  the  beard  and  beat  the 
immortal  ichor  out  of  him.  That  kept  him  on  reasonably 
good  behavior  for  a  quarter  of  a  century,  when  his  impu- 
dence again  rose  paramount  to  his  judgment  and  he  was 
given  a  second  prescription.  The  trouble  with  the  arro- 
gant brute  to-day  is  that  he  has  been  allowed  to  go  too  long 
without  a  licking.  For  more  than  half  a  century  John  Bull 
has  been  turning  his  broad  beam  up  to  Uncle  Sam  and  fair- 
ly begging  for  another  blistering.  He  should  be  accommo- 
dated— and  this  time  Columbia  should  drive  her  Cinderella 
so  far  under  the  old  buccaneer's  coat-tails  that  he  could 
taste  leather  all  the  rest  of  his  life. 

But  the  capitulation  of  Cornwallis,  the  almost  ludicrous 
defeat  of  Pakenham's  veterans  by  Jackson's  frontiersmen, 
and  the  regularity  with  which  British  athletes  have  been  rel- 
egated to  the  rear  by  their  American  brethren,  does  not 
fully  explain  the  biliousness  of  John  Bull.  We  have  out- 
stripped him  even  further  in  the  field  of  industry  than  in 
athletic  sport — have  defeated  him  even  more  signally  in  the 
struggle  for  national  pre-eminence  than  in  the  squared  cir- 
cle. The  little  Republic  of  a  century  ago,  struggling  pain- 


228  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

fully  along  the  Atlantic  sea-board,  has  become  the  wealth- 
iest and  most  powerful  nation  in  the  world — the  Star  of 
Empire  is  now  blazing  in  the  West.     America  is  the  com- 
mercial rival  of   England — a  more  grievous  offense   than 
even  the  Declaration  of  Independence.     In  every  possible 
way  John   Bull   makes  his   displeasure  manifest.     During 
our  civil  war  the  present  premier  declared  that  the  disrup- 
tion of  this  nation  would  inure  to  the  commercial  advantage 
of  England — a  fine  sentiment  truly  for  our  "Mother  Coun- 
try"— and  thereupon  John  Bull  began  to  meddle  in  our  fam- 
ily unpleasantness.     He  had  to  pay  for  this  impertinence, 
and  that   did  not   strengthen  the  entente  cordiale  to  any 
alarming  extent.     In  all  official  intercourse  with  America 
England  assumes  an  arrogant  and  dictatorial  tone  charac- 
teristic of  that  country  when  dealing  with  third  and  fourth- 
class  powers.     There  was  a  time  when  such  treatment  would 
have  been  hotly  resented;  but  the   old   Continentals  have 
been  succeeded  by  Anglo-maniacs  who  have  never  forgiven 
Almighty   God   for   suffering  them   to  be   born   American 
sovereigns  instead  of    British  subjects;  who  cultivate  the 
Hinglish  hawkcent, — which  is  about  as  cheerful  as  polish- 
ing a  back-tooth  with  a  rat-tail  file — ape  the  waddle  of  the 
Prince  of  Wales  and  turn  up  their  twousahs  don't-cher- 
know  whenever  they  hear  that  it  is  raining  in  "Lonnon." 
When  these  Anglo-maniacs  accumulate  a  little  money  they 
employ  some  fakir  to  evolve  from  his  imagination  a  " family 
tree"  and  hang  thereon  a  bogus  coat-of-arms.    They  decide 
that  Uncle  Sam's  sons  are  not  quite  good  enough  to  beget 
their  grandchildren  and  buy  scorbutic  dukelings  for  their 
daughters  to  drag  thro'  the  divorce  courts.     They  are  the 
same  mangy  mavericks  who  dubbed  Jim  Elaine  a  "jingoist" 
for  advocating  a  foreign  policy  with  a  dash  of  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence  in  it — one  that  would  compel  even 
England   to   respect   the   American   eagle.      They   are   the 
same  empty  peacocks  who  lift  up  their  discordant  voices  in 
frantic  protest  when  orator  or  editor  gives  utterance  to  a 
genuinely  American  sentiment — who  have  a  conniption  fit 
and  fall  in  it  whenever  a  Congressman  suggests  that  John 
Bull  be  compelled  to  keep  his  meddlesome  snout  out  of 
American  politics.     These  are  the  featherless  poll-parrots 
who  prattle  of  "twisting  the  lion's  tail"  whenever  it  is  pro- 
posed to  resent  an  English  insult — talking-machines  who 
are  witty  at  the  expense  of  their  country's  honor.     These 
are  the  unhung  idiots  who  imagine  that  a  nation,  producing 
in  abundance  everything  humanity  needs,  would  go  to  hell 
in  a  handbasket  if  it  adopted  an  independent  currency  sys- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  229 

tern  or  an  international  policy  which  Yewrup  did  not  ap- 
prove. Why  in  the  devil's  name  these  birds  do  not  fly 
across  the  ocean  to  their  beloved  England,  instead  of  re- 
maining1 to  befoul  their  own  nests,  it  were  difficult  to  de- 
termine. They  should  be  compelled  to  migrate,  for  no  man 
who  esteems  another  country  above  that  from  which  he  gets 
his  daily  bread,  is  fit  to  be  buried  in  its  soil,  drowned  in  its 
waters  or  hanged  on  its  trees. 

Why  should  the  foremost  nation  of  all  the  world  fawn  at 
the  fat  feet  of  John  Bull?  We  can  get  along  much  better 
without  England  than  can  that  country  without  us.  Co- 
lumbia has  proven  both  her  intellectual  and  physical  supe- 
riority to  Britannia.  Then  why  should  she  stand  humble 
and  shame- faced  in  her  presence?  America  has  done  more 
for  the  human  race  in  a  hundred  and  twenty  years  than  has 
England  in  all  her  hoary  centuries.  We  could  buy  the 
miserable  little  island,  pay  for  it  and  blow  it  at  the  moon, 
and  the  world  would  be  none  the  worse.  England  has 
produced  some  really  great  men ;  but,  like  the  hen  that  sat 
on  the  nest  of  door-knobs,  it  has  taken  her  a  terribly  long 
time  to  bring  off  her  brood.  Call  the  roll  of  the  great  of 
England  and  America  for  the  present  century  and  say  which 
the  world  could  best  afford  to  spare ! 

What  we  need  is  a  million  funerals  among  the  Anglo- 
maniacs  and  a  little  healthy  Jim  Blaine  " jingoism"  in  the 
White  House.  We  need  a'  revival  of  that  6Td  spirit  which 
taught  that  the  title  of  American  sovereign  is  superior  to 
any  ever  borne  by  a  British  subject.  We  need  an  adminis- 
tration that  can  understand  that  America  is  to-day  the  great- 
est nation  on  the  map  of  the  world  and  does  not  have  to 
dance  attendance  on  transatlantic  powers.  It  is  time  the 
American  eagle  came  off  the  nest  where  he  has  so  long  been 
hatching  dollars,  and  emitted  a  scream  that  would  clear  the 
atmosphere  of  political  buzzards.  It  is  time  the  Giant  of  the 
Occident  was  looking  this  world  over  and  deciding  what  he 
is  going  to  do  with  it.  Is  America  to  be  a  new  and  greater 
Rome,  bequeathing  freedom  to  all  mankind ;  or  will  the 
Anglomaniacs  annex  it  to  England  and  ordain  that  the 
tail  shall  wag  the  dog? 


230  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

THE  SINGLE-TAKERS. 
"GEORGEISM"  REVIEWED. 

Of  the  various  political  parties  and  economic  schools  now 
striving  to  solve  the  industrial  problem,  none  is  more  en- 
thusiastically aggressive  than  the  so-called  Single-Taxers — 
those  who  expect,  by  laying  the  burden  of  govern- 
ment altogether  upon  land,  to  compel  the  use  or  relinquish- 
ment  of  natural  opportunities  for  the  production  of  wealth. 
The  Single-Taxers  are  quite  sure  they  have  discovered  an 
industrial  catholicon,  and,  in  season  and  out  of  season,  they 
continue,  with  unabated  zeal  and  unfaltering  faith,  their 
"campaign  of  education/'  their  crusade  against  professional 
landlordism.  As  might  be  expected,  they  are  regarded 
with  pronounced  aversion  by  the  large  land-owners  who, 
driven  to  bay  by  this  bold  assault  on  prescriptive  right,  are 
not  particularly  choice  of  their  weapons  of  warfare,  resort- 
ing to  the  bludgeon  of  invective  quite  as  readily  as  to  the 
rapier  of  ridicule.  It  proves  nothing  to  denounce  the 
Single-Taxers  as  "lunatics"  and  "crazy  communists" — at 
least  nothing  further  than  the  inability  of  their  opponents 
to  meet  and  overcome  them  in  the  arena  of  intellectual  con- 
troversy. Abuse  is  neither  argument  nor  good  policy — 
individuals  and  political  parties  thrive  upon  it.  It  is  re- 
cruiting the  ranks  of  the  Single-Taxers  and  making  of  the 
Populists  a  political  power.  Abuse  is  an  evidence  of  log- 
ical weakness — is  the  wild  ravings  of  vindictive  ignorance. 

Lest  the  landlord  class  should  take  fright  and  refuse  to 
delve  deeper  here,  I  hasten  to  assure  them  that  I  am  not  a 
disciple  of  Henry  George.  He  has  failed  to  convince  me; 
but  I  freely  admit  that  his  theories  have  never  been  success- 
fully controverted.  To  answer  such  a  man  by  calling  him 
a  "crank"  were  too  much  like  the  college  of  cardinals  reply- 
ing to  Galileo  by  putting  him  in  jail.  Henry  George  is  a 
world-compeller,  and  we  must  either  prove  the  fallacy  of  his 
conclusions  or  eventually  capitulate. 

The  thesis  from  which  the  Single-Tax  is  legitimately  de- 
rived did  not  originate  with  George,  nor  with  Quesnay  or 
Rousseau ;  it  is  old  as  human  history.  It  is  an  ancient  idea 
cropping  out  in  our  nineteenth  century  civilization — a 
kind  of  economic  atavism  which  goes  far  to  prove  the  im- 
mortality of  mind,  the  indestructibility  of  human  habits. 
Henry  George  is  chiefly  responsible  for  the  revival  of  the 
state  landlord  idea ;  hence  it  has  been  called  by  his  name  by 
ignorant  editors  who  imagined  it  a  new  "craze." 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  231 

That  there  is  something  radically  wrong  with  our  indus- 
trial system  is  generally  conceded.  Even  the  old  political 
parties  ostentatiously  train  beneath  the  "reform"  banner, 
and  promise  the  betterment  of  labor's  sad  condition.  Despite 
the  mighty  increase  in  the  wealth-producing  power  of  labor 
resulting  from  improved  machinery,  the  masses  find  the 
battle  of  life  becoming  ever  more  bitter.  While  those  who 
neither  toil  nor  spin  are  attired  like  unto  Solomon  in  all  his 
glory,  those  who  ditch  and  delve  are  mere  bundles  of  rags. 
While  Idleness  feasts  Industry  starves.  So  long  as  such 
conditions  prevail  attempts  will  be  made  to  right  the  wrong, 
and  failure  to  obtain  relief  will  produce  that  restless  discon- 
tent of  which  bloody  revolutions  are  born. 

The  problem  which  confronts  us  is  of  paramount  impor- 
tance— a  crisis  in  the  history  of  the  human  race  is  at  hand. 
Every  industrial  depression  is  becoming  a  greater  danger, 
not  alone  to  existing  conditions,  to  established  forms  and 
formulas,  but  to  civilization  itself.  There  was  never  a  time 
when  the  latter  could  be  so  easily  and  irremediably  destroy- 
ed. The  truth  of  this  startling  proposition  must  readily  ap- 
pear to  whosoever  will  carefully  consider  it.  When  each 
community  was  an  independent  microco'sm  both  progress 
and  retrogression  were  slow;  but  science  has  transformed 
these  isolated  and  independent  communities  into  a  mighty 
commercial  entity.  A  century  or  two  ago  war,  pestilence 
or  famine  might  have  swept  away  half  the  population  of  the 
world  without  materially  affecting  the  remainder;  to-day  the 
cotton  planter  of  Texas  and  the  corn  grower  of  Kansas  de- 
pend for  their  prosperity  upon  the  price  of  those  staples  in 
Europe,  the  mechanics  of  England  and  Germany  upon  the 
demand  for  their  wares  in  the  antipodes.  A  million  inde- 
pendent corpuscles  have  been  incorporated  in  one  great 
organism,  which  is  affected  in  every  part  by  what  befalls  any 
of  its  members.  It  is  this  fact — this  mighty  union  of  forces 
—that  made  the  progress  of  the  Nineteenth  century  pos- 
sible; and  it  is  this  that  has  made  feasible  a  world-wide 
French  Revolution  that  may  never  leave  a  sanctuary  for 
civilization — no  house  of  refuge  in  which  may  be  hid  away 
and  preserved  for  happier  times  the  wisdom  accumulated 
by  the  toil  of  sixty  centuries.  Economists  usually  consider 
the  printing  press,  public  education  and  political  equality  as 
the  conservators  of  civilization,  the  dynamics  which  will 
carry  it  ever  onward  and  upward.  They  forget  that  the 
same  winds  that  waft  a  proud  ship  to  port  may  rip  its  canvas 
to  ribbons  and  drive  it  upon  the  rocks.  When  the  masses 
were  ignorant  and  space  had  not  yielded  to  the  power  of 


232  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

steam  and  the  electric  telegraph,  empires  might  rise  or  fall, 
peoples  attain  to  Roman  citizenship  or  be  reduced  to 
Russian  serfdom,  and  few  beyond  that  particular  corner  of 
the  continent  either  know  or  care;  to-day  the  progress  of 
German  socialism  is  watched  with  intense  interest  in  San 
Francisco,  and  the  march  of  a  Coxey  on  our  national  capi- 
tal is  bulletined  in  Bulgaria.  Men  separated  by  far  seas  are 
brought  into  close  communion,  agrarian  and  communistic 
movements  assume  an  international  character — the  electric 
spark  may  become  the  beacon  of  universal  war,  may  set  the 
world  ablaze. 

Political  sovereignty  united  to  industrial  slavery,  public 
education  for  those  steeped  to  the  lips  in  hopeless  poverty 
were  indeed  a  dangerous  compound.  Well  did  Caesar  say 
of  the  lean  and  hungry  Cassius,  "he  thinks  too  much — such 
men  are  dangerous."  Lean  and  hungry  men  who  do  not 
read  and  think  are  servile  slaves  who  accept  their  fate  like 
the  patient  ox  or  ass;  but  a  well-filled  head  and  an  empty 
stomach  were  fire  and  gunpowder  in  the  social  ark  of  the 
covenant.  When  men  begin  to  ask  why  some  should  want 
while  others  waste;  when  a  dissatisfied  growl  by  the  Par- 
isian sans-culotte  is  promptly  echoed  by  the  Chicago 
canaille;  when  the  proletarians  throughout  the  world  begin 
to  realize  their  strength  and  to  regard  the  patrician  as  their 
natural  enemy;  when  they  have  been  hoodooed  and  hum- 
bugged by  pseudo-economists  and  lying  politicians  until 
hope  is  dead  and  patience  quite  exhausted;  when  they 
realize  that  progress  in  the  industrial  arts  means  deeper 
poverty  and  education  but  a  lamp  by  whose  cold  light  they 
view  their  own  wretchedness,  think  you  our  boasted  civili- 
zation is  safe? 

Such  are  the  conditions  to-d'ay,  and  enlightened  self- 
interest  should  suggest  to  the  wealthy  class  the  wisdom  of 
giving  an  impartial  hearing  to  a  man  who  imagines  he  has 
found  why  a  progressive  civilization  breeds  plutocrats  and 
paupers — why,  albeit  his  productive  power  has  been  multi- 
plied, the  workman  continues  at  very  death-grips  with  the 
wolf  of  Want.  The  ability  and  erudition  of  Mr.  George, 
and  the  further  fact  that  his  disciples  are  not  only  many, 
but  men  of  more  than  average  intelligence  and  economic 
information,  certainly  entitles  him  to  courteous  considera- 
tion. 

It  were  folly  to  call  the  Single-Tax  movement  a  passing 
bubble  on  the  political  sea.  Men  still  alive  once  discoursed 
in  that  vein  of  "the  Abolition  lunacy;"  but  despite  their 
sneers — or  perchance  because  thereof — it  grew  and  gath- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  233 

ered  force  until  able  to  exchange  the  forum  for  the  field 
and  prove  the  supernal  wisdom  of  its  thesis  with  the  naked 
sword.  In  considering  the  future  of  the  Single-Tax  move- 
ment it  must  not  be  forgotten  th'at  this  country  is  to-day 
a  political  chaos, — and  that  from  chaos  new  worlds  are 
evolved. 


The  proposition  of  Henry  George  is  that  poverty  per- 
sists despite  the  increased  productiveness  of  labor  because 
of  land  monopoly,  which  enables  the  land-owner  to  de- 
mand and  obtain  as  rent  all  the  joint  product  of  capital  and 
labor  above  what  will  induce  the  former  to  seek  investment 
and  the  latter  to  accept  employment.  He  would  abolish 
private  ownership  of  land  and  compel  each  occupant  to  pay 
a  rental  to  the  state  proportioned  to  the  desirability  of  his 
holding.  He  assumes  that  land  values  are  created  by  the 
community  and  should  not  go  to  enrich  the  individual,  but 
be  appropriated  by  government  and  employed  to  promote 
the  general  welfare.  This  plan,  he  thinks,  would  permit  the 
abrogation  of  taxes  on  the  products  of  industry,  thereby, 
enhancing  the  incentive  to  production,  abolish  monopoly  of 
natural  resc-urces  and  insure  to  rich  and  poor  access  thereto 
on  equal  terms.  He  insists  that  there  is  no  "conflict  be- 
tween capital  and  labor;"  that  these  productive  forces  are 
really  allies  and  the  land  monopolist  their  common  enemy, 
the  efficient  cause  of  that  great  inequality  in  the  distribution 
of  wealth  which  to-day  threatens  the  very  existence  of  civi- 
lization. 

The  theory  is  a  very  attractive  one;  but  let  us  measure  it 
by  existing  conditions.  I  freely  concede  that  did  one  man 
own  the  entire  arable  area  of  the  earth  the  rest  of  the  race 
would  be  as  truly  his  slaves  as  tho'  he  held  a  proprietary  in- 
terest in  their  bodies.  No  matter  how  great  their  produc- 
tion of  wealth,  he  could  appropriate  all  in  excess  of  what 
would  yield  mere  animal  existence.  It  is  as  absurd  to  per- 
mit a  monopolization  of  land  as  to  permit  a  monopolization 
of  the  atmosphere.  But  that  is  not  the  question — we  need 
not  cross  a  bridge  until  we  come  to  it.  Does  a  world- 
embracing  land  monopoly  exist?  And,  if  so,  is  it  really  re- 
sponsible for  the  fact  that  the  population  of  the  globe  is 
dividing  into  two  well-defined  classes — millionaires  and 
mendicants,  masters  and  slaves?  And  if  Mr.  George  has 
properly  diagnosed  the  industrial  disease,  has  he  prescribed 
the  proper  remedy? 

It  were  impossible  in  the  brief  space  of  a  magazine  ar- 


234  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

ticle  to  take  up  in  detail  the  propositions  of  the  apostle  of 
state  landlordism  and  subject  each  to  a  searching  analysis; 
nor  is  it  necessary  to  do  more  than  call  attention  to  a  few 
indisputable  facts  to  prove  that  the  public  policy  he  recom- 
mends would  do  little  or  nothing  to  ameliorate  the  hard 
conditions  that  behedge  the  toiling  millions. 

Although  the  human  race  has  inhabited  the  earth  for 
ages,  there  has  never  been  a  time  when  the  arable  land,  the 
timber,  coal,  iron  and  other  great  sources  of  wealth  were 
monopolized.  Three  continents,  rich  in  natural  resources 
and  capable  of  supporting  dense  populations  even  tho'  iso- 
lated from  all  other  portions  of  the  earth,  have  scarce  felt 
the  touch  of  the  dominant  race,  are  inhabited  chiefly  by  pre- 
datory bands  of  savages.  It  is  possible  that  the  time  will 
come  when  the  entire  available  surface  of  the  earth  will  be 
thick-settled  as  Massachusetts — when  landlordism  will  be- 
come a  serious  problem;  but  we  have  no  reason  to  believe 
that  the  total  population  has  materially  increased  within 
historic  times.  There  has  ever  been,  perhaps  always  will 
be,  a  vent  for  overcrowded  countries.  Man  is  not  confined 
to  that  locality  in  which  he  is  born.  Year  by  year  migra- 
tion is  made  easier,  cheaper,  the  world's  population  rend- 
ered more  mobile.  Rapid  and  systematic  transportation 
facilities  are  spreading  our  cities  over  vast  areas  and  bring- 
ing the  remote  parts  of  the  earth  within  easy  reach  of  the 
world's  markets.  A  difference  of  a  shilling  or  two  a  day 
will  move  vast  bodies  of  laborers  across  the  ocean,  an 
added  cent  of  interest  send  capital  to  the  antipodes.  When 
ignorance  among  laborers  was  general,  a  journey  of  a  few 
hundred  miles  a  serious  matter  and  international  protection 
of  capital  practically  unknown,  those  who  could  monopo- 
lize the  natural  resources  of  a  populous  country  might 
grievously  oppress  the  people;  but  to-day  labor  and  capital 
look  the  world  over  for  the  best  opportunity,  are  no  longer 
dominated  by  the  local  landlords.  The  vast  amount  of 
European  wealth  and  labor  here  in  America,  and  the 
mighty  streams  of  money  and  muscle  setting  towards  newer 
countries  still,  should  suggest  to  Mr.  George  the  impossi- 
bility of  landowners  grievously  oppressing  these  great  fac- 
tors of  production  until  the  entire  earth  is  "fenced  in:." 

If  Mr.  George  desires  to  invest  money  in  a  great  manu- 
facturing enterprise,  a  hundred  thriving  cities  are  ready  to 
donate  a  desirable  site,  and  some  of  them  will  even  exempt 
his  plant  from  taxation  for  a  term  of  years — labor  and  capi- 
tal may  produce  to  the  utmost  of  their  power  and  divide 
the  product  unvexed  by  the  greed  of  their  arch-enemy.  If 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  235 

he  would  like  to  acquire  a  little  farm,  thousands  of  men  who 
are  "land  poor"  are  eager  to  accommodate  him  on  easy 
terms.  If  he  will  but  give  it  out  that  he  wants  to  buy  a 
building  lot,  he'll  find  his  front  yard  black  with  real  estate 
men  ready  to  convince  him  that  the  lan'dlorders  of  the  com- 
munity do  not  constitute  a  close  corporation.  True,  he  can 
no  longer  go  into  Illinois  or  Indiana  and  "take  up"  a  fertile 
farm ;  he  will  be  required  to  pay  for  the  value  that  has  been 
conferred  upon  land  by  the  expenditure  of  the  wealth  and 
energy  of  others.  In  attempting  to  seize  more  than  this, 
the  landowners  drive  away  the  population,  and  with  it  the 
superior  advantages  which  give  value  to  their  holdings. 
When  the  owners  of  land  in  the  heart  of  a  city  demand  too 
much,  the  tendency  of  the  trade  center  is  to  move;  in  the 
direction  of  the  least  resistance.  Thus,  when  landlordism 
becomes  a  disease,  it  supplies  its  own  remedy.  Land  is 
fixed  while  labor  and  capital  are  not.  I  use  the  word  capital 
here  in  the  sense  in  which  Mr.  George  employs  it,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  land  ownership — really  a  distinction  with- 
out a  difference.  Despite  the  hair-splitting  of  those  econo- 
mists who  would  save  the  world  by  the  science  of  defini- 
tion, land  employed  for  productive  purposes  and  possessing 
a  marketable  value,  is  as  much  capital  as  the  farm  machin- 
ery and  store  buildings  upon  it.  To  distinguish  rent  from 
interest  is  a  species  of  philosophizing  that  bakes  no  bread, 
and  I  am  surprised  that  a  man  of  Mr.  George's  breadth  of 
mind  should  waste  time  on  such  profitless  subtleties  while 
grappling  with  the  great  industrial  problem.  If  I  have 
money  which  I  desire  to  employ  for  the  attainment  of  more 
wealth,  I  may  buy  a  farm  with  it  and  receive  rent;  or  I  may 
loan  it  to  another  who  will  buy  a  farm  with  it  and  pay  me 
interest.  By  whatever  name  the  increment  be  called,  it  is 
dug  out  of  the  soil;  hence  it  were  ridiculous  to  say  that  the 
landowner  is  the  economic  enemy  of  the  capitalist.  The 
number  of  mortgages  recorded  in  the  United  States  would 
indicate  that  in  the  battle  which  Mr.  George  imagines  is 
being  waged  between  the  two,  the  capitalist  is  more  than 
holding  his  own.  Capital  represented  by  desirable  land 
presses  for  employment  just  as  does  capital  represented  by 
coin;  and  when  it  cannot  get  much  it  must  take  little. 

But,  it  may  be  asked,  how  comes  it  that  thousands  of 
fertile  acres  lie  idle  in  the  older  states  while  people  press 
forward  into  the  wilderness  ?  I  do  not  say  there  is  no  local 
land  monopoly — I  say  that  there  is  no  general  monopoly. 
I  have  monopolized  one  woman  and  one  section  of  land; 
but  that  does  not  prevent  other  men  getting  married,  or 


236  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

acquiring  farms.  There  are  other  wiomerr  to  be  won  and 
other  sunny  acres  awaiting  ownership.  In  fact,  taking  the 
world  at  large,  the  supply  of  both  land  and  women  seems 
to  be  in  shameful  excess  of  the  demand. 

Men  must  be  governed  by  their  means.  If  I  have  an 
abundance  of  money,  I  will  buy  a  farm  in  that  garden  of 
the  gods.  Central  Texas,  where  I  may  enjoy  many  pecu- 
niary and  social  advantages;  if  I  have  but  little,  I  will  go 
where  land  is  cheaper  because  of  less  desirable  environ- 
ment, and  strive  by  industry  and  economy  to  acquire  those 
conveniences  which  my  present  capital  does  not  permit  me 
to  enjoy.  If  I  have  a  million  of  money,  I  may  buy  and 
build  on  Fifth  avenue;  if  I  have  in  my  pockets  only  a  choice 
assortment  of  rectangular  holes,  I  must  content  myself  with 
a  squalid  tenement  in  Rag  Alley  until,  by  getting  a  com- 
pound cathartic  hustle  on  myself,  I  am  able  to  command 
the  comforts  of  life.  It  might  be  asked  with  equal  reason 
why  great  store  buildings  sometimes  remain  empty  while 
hucksters  stand  on  the  curbstone  to  vend  their  wares;  why 
fine  residences  are  often  tenantless  while  there's  brisk  de- 
mand for  small  cottages — why  women  wear  cheap  calico 
while  bolts  of  silk  remain  unsold. 


Let  us  briefly  consider  that  "unearned  increment"  of 
which  Mr.  George  would  deprive  the  landholder  as  some- 
thing to  which  he  is  not  justly  entitled.  Ten  years  ago — 
let  us  say — John  Smith  purchased  a  lot  in  tfie  new  town 
of  K.,  paying  therefor  $100.  It  is  now  salable  at  $1,000, 
an  increase  in  value  of  $900.  He  has  not  driven  a  stake 
upon  it,  has  not  caused  it  to  produce  food  or  shelter  for 
man  or  beast.  The  town  has  simply  grown  up  around 
it  and  enhanced  its  desirability,  therefore  its  market 
Rvalue.  Surely  here  is  a  case  of  "unearned  increment" 
upon  which  the  public  may  pounce  with  a  clear  con- 
science! But  wait  a  bit.  Although  he  has  not  used  the 
lot,  has  not  Smith  paid  "rent"  thereon  to  the  state,  county 
and  municipality  in  the  form  of  taxes?  And  from  such 
taxes  have  not  the  streets  been  paved,  schoolhouses  built, 
government  maintained  and  a  fire  department  paid?  And 
do  not  these  things  add  to  the  desirability  and  market 
value  of  all  land  in  the  community?  Has  he  not  for  ten 
years  past  been  pouring  into  the  public  coffers  of  K.  the 
product  of  his  labor?  True,  if  ten  thousand  non-residents 
had  purchased  lots  in  the  prospective  city  and  none  had 
improved  them  there  would  have  been  no  increase  in 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  237 

value ;  and  it  is  also  true  that  Smith  would  not  be  paying- 
taxes  on  a  valuation  of  $1,000  for  the  continued  better- 
ment of  the  town.  After  deducting  the  purchase  price, 
compound  interest  thereon  and  taxes  for  ten  years,  his 
profits  are  large;  but  suppose  he  had  paid  $1,000  for  the 
lot,  and,  despite  all  the  money  expended  to  maintain  it, 
now  finds  it  marketable  at  but  $100:  how  much  unearned 
increment  is  the  government  entitled  to?  If  only  the  in- 
crease in  land  values  is  to  be  taken  for  public  uses,  as 
proposed  by  Mr.  George,  from  whence  is  that  county  or 
municipal  government  where  lands  are  declining  in  value, 
to  derive  its  revenue? 

There  are  unquestionably  instances  where  people  have 
been  enriched  by  a  rise  in  land  values  which  they  did  little 
to  promote;  but  it  may  be  safely  assumed  that  the  gen- 
eral rule  of  action  of  land  owners  is  in  the  direction  of 
self-interest — that  the  increase  in  values  is  due  chiefly  to 
their  industry  and  enterprise.  If  it  be  true  that  "men  will 
not  take  up  arms  in  defense  of  a  boarding-house,"  it  is 
also  true  that  they  will  not  construct  railways  and  canals, 
build  factories  and  bridges  for  the  benefit  of  a  commu- 
nity in  which  they  have  no  proprietary  interest.  To  illus- 
trate :  A  few  years  ago  the  citizens  of  a  Texas  town  in 
which  realty  values  were  rapidly  declining,  raised  a  con- 
siderable bonus  to  secure  a  railroad.  The  road  was  built, 
the  trade  territory  of  the  town  increased,  freights  fell, 
business  became  brisk  and  realty  rapidly  advanced.  Many 
people  moved  to  the  town  and  adjacent  country  to  share 
the  prosperity  and  by  their  industry  made  it  greater. 
There  was  employment  for  more  laborers  at  better  wages 
than  formerly  and  new  opportunities  for  the  profitable 
employment  of  capital.  The  newcomers  profited  by  the 
enterprise  of  the  old  citizens ;  but  were  they  entitled  to 
appropriate  the  increase  in  realty  values?  Under  a  sys- 
tem permitting  them  to  do  so  would  that  railroad  have 
been  built?  Was  the  enhancement  of  values  really  un- 
earned increment,  or  was  it  the  legitimate  reward  of 
capital  wisely  employed? 

When  a  number  of  people  penetrate  into  a  new  coun- 
try and  subdue  the  wild  beasts  and  savage  men ;  when 
they  create  a  social  oasis  in  the  wilderness,  from  a  trade 
ganglion,  establish  a  government  and  make  it  a  more 
desirable  place  of  residence  for  those  who  come  after, 
are  they  not  entitled  to  their  reward?  According  to  that 
moral  law  of  which  Mr.  George  talks  so  much,  are  the 
newcomers  entitled  to  appropriate  unto  themselves  the 


238  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

value  created  by  the  toil  and  sacrifice  of  the  pioneers? 
And  when  they  in  turn  have  builded  roads,  established 
schools,  and  by  their  labor  made  the  land  still  more  de- 
sirable, were  it  either  just  or  politic  to  deprive  them  of 
the  fruits  of  their  toil  as  something  that  belongs  equally 
to  any  tramp  who  may  drag  his  idle  carcass  into  the 
community? 


The  Single  Tax  propaganda  is  simply  an  attempt  at 
compromise  between  the  Georgian  theory  and  existing 
conditions — the  insertion  of  the  thin  end  of  the  wedge. 
Mr.  George  would,  if  possible,  confiscate  to  the  last 
penny  "that  fund  arising  from  general  growth  and  de- 
velopment," regardless  of  its  efficient  cause.  Just  what 
he  would  do  with  the  surplus  after  defraying  govern- 
mental expenses  and,  making  necessary  public  improve- 
ments he  does  not  plainly  say,  but  intimates  that  he 
would  pro-rate  it  among  the  people  regardless  of  the 
value  of  the  individual  in  our  social  economy,  as  is  the 
practice  in  Freudenstaedt,  Klingenberg  and  other  Ger- 
man Arcadias — that  have  made  no  material  progress 
worth  mentioning  during  several  centuries.  If  that  be 
the  idea,  and  it  can  be  successfully  carried  into  execution, 
then  indeed  will  Weary  Willie  and  Dusty  Rhodes  find  life 
well  worth  the  living. 

But  the  Single-Taxers  would  not  go  to  the  Georgian  ex- 
treme— they  would  simply  let  down  the  bars.  They  would 
take  from  the  landowner  only  enough  "rent"  for  the  support 
of  government ;  there  is  to  be  no  largesses  distributed  among 
the  impecunious — not  just  yet.  It  is  urged  that  this  plan 
would  not  interfere  with  private  ownership  of  land,  but 
would  abolish  land  monopoly,  while  the  tax  could  be  more 
equitable  and  collected  at  less  cost  than  any  hitherto  de- 
vised. This  is  another  plausible  theory  concocted  without 
due  regard  to  conditions.  Experience  has  repeatedly 
proven  that  while  the  people  will  stand  a  heavy  indirect  tax 
without  murmuring,  a  much  lighter  one  direct  in  incidence 
will  drive  them  to  revolt.  To  illustrate :  The  man  who 
pays  an  indirect  tax  of  $40  a  year  on  the  liquor  he  drinks 
seldom  thinks  cf  it.  Ask  him  about  the  liquor  tax  and 
the  chances  are  he  will  tell  you  it  ought  to  be  increased; 
but  let  the  government  take  the  excise  off  liquor  and  on  the 
first  of  each  year  compel  this  consumer  to  pay  $20 — and 
denounce  it  as  an  outrage.  It  profits  nothing  to  urge  that 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  239 

such  action  is  illogical;  theories  are  but  intellectual  gym- 
nastics— conditions  govern. 

But  if  the  Single-Tax  could  be  inaugurated  despite  the 
prejudices  of  the  people,  would  it  abolish  local  monopolies 
of  land?  Would  it  even  have  a  tendency  in  that  direction? 
If  it  be  true  that  every  dollar  expended  by  government  must 
be  coaxed  out  of  the  soil,  torn  from  the  mine  or  hewn  from 
the  forest,  what  difference  does  it  make,  so  far  as  monopoli- 
zation of  these  natural  resources  is  concerned,  whether  the 
tax  falls  upon  them  directly  or  indirectly?  If  it  be  true  that 
the  government  mulct  would  be  lightened,  would  not  mo- 
nopoly of  natural  resources  be  encouraged  rather  than  re- 
pressed? Let  us  say  that  I  am  paying  taxes  on  $10,000 
worth  of  realty,  half  of  which  is  unimproved  land  yielding 
me  no  income,  and  that  the  annual  mulct  is  $300;  the  Sin- 
gle-Tax is  inaugurated  and  my  buildings  become  exempt. 
My  taxes — reduced,  of  course,  by  the  improved  system — 
amount  to  but  $200,  all  upon  land.  Will  I  be  more  likely 
than  before  to  place  my  idle  land  on  the  market  for  what  it 
will  bring  and  retire  from  a  "speculation"  supposed  by  the 
Single-Taxers  to  be  the  root  of  all  economic  evil?  And  if  so, 
why?  I  am  certainly  better  able  than  before  to  maintain 
my  title,  for  the  governmental  drain  upon  my  sources  of 
wealth  is  lighter.  The  supply  of  land  has  not  been  in- 
creased nor  the  demand  therefor  diminished.  In  this  era 
of  machinery  production  is  impracticable  without  the  co-op- 
eration of  capital.  True,  labor  is  the  creator  of  capital,  but 
it  has  become  largely  dependent  upon  its  creature — with- 
out its  assistance  must  return  to  the  industrial  system  of  the 
savage.  This  is  what  those  economists  mean  who  offend 
Mr.  George  by  discoursing  of  the  "wage  fund."  If  the 
Single-Tax  leads  me  to  part  with  my  idle  land  is  the  capital 
available  for  the  employment  of  labor  increased?  If  the 
purchase  price  comes  from  the  sale  of  other  land  there  has 
simply  been  a  swapping  of  jack-knives ;  if  from  manufactur- 
ing or  commerce,  the  result  is  the  same — no  capital  has  been 
added  to  the  general  stock,  no  new  opportunities  have  been 
opened  to  human  endeavor. 

It  is  urged  that  the  shifting  of  taxes  from  all  other  forms 
of  wealth  to  land  would  encourage  production  because  men 
would  no  longer  be  "fined"  by  government  for  building  a 
house,  constructing  an  engine  or  erecting  a  mill.  What  is 
taxation  but  the  taking  by  government  of  a  portion  of  la- 
bor's product?  Land,  by  itself  considered,  can  pay  no 
taxes.  All  governmental  burdens  laid  upon  it  must  be 
borne  by  what  labor  compels  it  to  yield.  Taxation  is  a 


240  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

tithe  taken  from  the  bushel  of  corn,  the  bale  of  cotton,  the 
barrel  of  flour  and  the  bolt  of  cloth.  Such  being  the  case, 
what  boots  it  whether  the  tax  be  laid  upon  the  land  or  the 
product — on  the  plow,  the  crop  or  the  crib?  As  first  or  last 
the  producer  of  wealth  must  pay  the  tax,  what  difference 
does  it  make,  so  far  as  production  is  concerned,  from  which 
pocket  it  is  taken? 


There  are  some  evils  inseparable  from  private  ownership 
of  land;  but  the  same  may  be  said  of  every  human  institu- 
tion yet  devised.  To  attribute  all  the  ills  of  the  industrial 
world  to  this  one  cause  were  too  much  like  tracing  bunions 
and  baldness  to  the  same  source.  Land  speculation  may 
have  had  something  to  do  with  the  commercial  crash  of 
'93;  but  it  were  difficult  to  show  that  its  influence  for  evil 
was  greater  than  speculation  in  grain  and  fibres,  stocks  and 
bonds.  There  was  a  tremendous  shrinkage  in  the  market 
value  of  realty  that  year.  The  "land  monopoly"  became 
demoralized  and  large  holders  made  a  desperate  effort  to 
unload  at  a  loss, — to  relinquish  natural  opportunities  for  the 
production  of  wealth — and  this,  the  Single-Taxers  say,  pro- 
duced the  panic.  If  this  be  true,  what  will  happen  when 
they  deliberately  bring  about  these  very  conditions  again? 
Having  undertaken  to  better  the  condition  of  labor  and  cap- 
ital by  compelling  the  great  landlords  to  throw  their  hold- 
ings upon  the  market  at  bankrupt  sale,  they  next  assure  us 
that  like  conditions  transformed  a  million  industrious 
workmen  into  penniless  tramps  and  strewed  the  country 
with  the  wrecks  of  business  concerns.  Did  land  monopoly 
produce  the  panic  of  1857 — when  a  vast  public  domain 
awaited  the  plow? 

The  fact  that  private  ownership  of  land  is  a  comparatively 
new  thing  is  no  argument  against  it  The  steam  engine 
and  electric  telegraph — even  the  Republic  in  which  we  live — 
are  new.  Nor  does  it  profit  aught  to  point  out  that  no 
landowner  can  trace  his  title  back  to  the  Original  Producer, 
as  can  the  owner  of  a  pocket-knife  or  a  pint  of  peanuts.  Mr. 
George  truly  says:  "That  which  a  man  makes  or  pro- 
duces is  his  own,  as  against  all  the  wrorld."  In  reality  man 
cannot  "make"  or  "produce"  a  pocket-knife  or  a  pint  of 
peanuts,  any  more  than  he  can  make  an  acre  of  land  or  a  bed 
of  ore.  He  can  only  transform  matter  into  articles  of  util- 
ity, adding  thereby  to  its  value,  and  that  added  value,  and 
that  only,  is  his.  In  the  same  manner  he  can,  by  his  labor, 
add  value  to  land  by  increasing  its  fertility  or  otherwise  en- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  241 

hancing  its  desirability,  and  that  added  value  is  ''his  own. 
as  against  all  the  world."  It  is  all  that  he  claims,  is  all 
that  he  can  sell.  In  time  the  pocket-knife  becomes  worth- 
less and  is  relinquished;  in  time  the  value  of  land  passes, 
and  on  the  site  of  once  populous  cities  the  solitary  herds- 
man tends  his  sheep.  This  being  true,  private  ownership 
of  land  is  as  defensible  as  private  ownership  of  corn  or  cat- 
tle— the  title  of  land  values  is  as  valid  as  his  title  to  any 
other  kind  of  wealth  which  human  endeavor  has  called  into 
existence. 

The  assumption  that  the  institution  upon  which  Mr. 
George  is  warring  makes  against  the  interest  of  labor  re- 
mains to  be  demonstrated.  In  matters  of  such  moment  it 
were  unsafe  to  draw  conclusions  from  a  few  isolated  in- 
stances. The  prosperous  condition  of  New  Zealand  may 
be  due  to  the  Single-Tax,  or  obtain  despite  of  it.  So  far  as 
I  can  gather  from  Single-Tax  literature — which  seems  as 
inexhaustible  as  Prohibition  tracts — there  is  no  more  reason 
for  attributing  trade  revival  in  that  country  to  the  new  sys- 
tem than  for  attributing  trade  revival  in  Texas  to  the  old. 
The  Single-Tax  were  much  like  bread  pills — calculated  to 
do  neither  much  good  nor  harm — granting,  of  course,  that 
the  change  could  be  effected  without  alarming  capital. 

But  the  extreme  of  the  George  system,  by  which  all  in- 
crease in  land  values  would  be  appropriated  by  the  state — 
and  to  which  the  Single-Tax  is  to  serve  as  stepping-stone — 
would  profoundly  affect  industrial  conditions  for  good  or 
for  ill.  Let  us  consider  its  probable  effects.  We  will  sup- 
pose that  I  am  by  trade  a  fanner,  and  find  myself  in  one  of 
the  older  states  entirely  devoid  of  capital.  Clearly  there  is 
nothing  for  me  to  do  but  seek  employment  with  one  more 
prosperous.  I  may  then  save  up  my  wage  until  able  to  em- 
bark in  business  for  myself,  either  as  tenant  in  a  populous 
community  where  land  is  dear,  or  as  proprietor  in  a  sparsely 
settled  one  where  it  is  cheap.  And  I  would  be  compelled 
to  do  the  same  thing  under  the  George  system,  for  if  granted 
access  to  land  I  have  not  the  capital  wherewith  to  provide 
the  teams  and  tools,  shelter  and  sustenance  necessary  to 
make  a  crop.  When  I  have  accumulated  a  little  capital  I 
lease  a  farm  and  pay  rent  to  an  individual ;  under  the  George 
system  I  would  pay  rent  to  the  state.  In  the  first  instance 
the  amount  is  fixed  by  the  law  of  supply  and  demand;  in 
the  latter  I  would  yield  to  my  landlord  (the  State)  every  ear 
of  corn  and  every  ounce  of  cotton  in  excess  of  what  could 
be  produced  on  the  poorest  land  in  cultivation.  In  time  I 
buy  a  farm.  It  represents  the  investment  of  so  much  of 


242  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

the  product  of  my  labor.  I  may  exchange  it  for  an  equal 
amount  of  other  forms  of  wealth.  Having  invested  my  cap- 
ital I  expect  it  to  yield  interest  as  well  as  wages.  I  at  once 
become  a  public-spirited  citizen  and  strive  to  benefit  my 
neighbors,  because  their  interest  and  mine  are  commutual. 
I  want  good  government,  schools,  and  churches.  I  may 
need  no  protection,  have  no  children  to  educate  or  soul  to 
save ;  but  I  realize  that  these  institutions  add  to  the  value  of 
my  property,  enhance  my  capital.  For  the  same  reason  I 
give  liberally  of  my  substance  to  secure  railways  and  fac- 
tories, establish  newspapers  and  libraries,  build  bridges  and 
drain  pestilential  marshes.  The  increase  in  the  value  of  my 
land  repays  my  enterprise  and  rewards  my  philanthropy. 
Under  the  system  proposed  by  Mr.  George  I  could  not  be- 
come a  free-holder,  but  would  remain  ever  a  tenant.  In- 
crease in  the  value  of  land  I  occupied  would  not  belong  to 
me,  but  to  the  state ;  hence  I  would  have  no  more  interest 
in  promoting  it  than  would  the  veriest  vagabond.  I  would 
be  as  happily  situated  on  the  outskirts  of  civilization  as  in 
the  center  of  the  most  populous  state,  as  prosperous  50 
miles  from  a  railway  or  a  blacksmith  shop  as  with  these  con- 
veniences at  my  door,  for  all  I  gained  by  the  advantages  of 
location  would  be  taken  from  me  for  the  benefit  of  those  less 
fortunately  situated.  With  the  chief  incentive  to  enterprise 
gone,  I  would  simply  stagnate,  and  so  would  my  fellows. 
We  would  have  a  new  and  greater  Freudenstaedt — progress- 
ing a  foot  or  two  every  four  centuries. 


The  Single-Taxers  who  are  industriously  warring  upon 
land  monopoly  are  frightening  themselves  with  a  spectre 
of  their  own  contriving.  There  is  no  such  thing  in  ex- 
istence— probably  never  will  be.  Some  men  own  vast 
quantities  of  land ;  but  a  majority  of  them  are  willing  to 
part  with  it,  or  portions  thereof,  on  terms  that  make  it  as 
safe  an  investment  as  the  purchase  of  any  other  class  of 
property  at  the  market  price.  As  a  rule  the  holders  of 
large  tracts  of  unused  land  are  eager  to  sell  the  bulk  of  it 
in  homestead  parcels  to  those  who  will  improve  it  and 
thereby  add  to  the  market  value  of  the  remainder.  The 
"unearned  increment,"  that  lesser  evil  of  which  Mr. 
George  complains,  usually  proves  an  effective  antidote  for 
the  greater  monopoly  of  land. 

In  most  of  the  large  cities  we  find  men  owning  large 
quantities  of  land  which  yields  them  enormous  revenues 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  243 

in  the  way  of  rent.  Thousands  of  poor  people  slave  from 
the  cradle  to  the  grave  to  enrich  these  arrogant  aristo- 
crats. Such  a,  condition  is  unquestionably  an  evil;  but 
will  the  Single-Tax — or  even  the  George  system  in  its 
entirety — cure  it?  Taking  the  tax  off  a  tenement  build- 
ing and  placing  it  on  the  land  occupied  has  no  more  ten- 
dency to  reduce  rent  than  has  exempting  one  floor  from 
taxation  and  doubling  it  on  the  next.  The  Single-Taxers 
take  it  for  granted  that  more  tenement  buildings  would 
be  erected — that  less  land  would  be  allowed  to  remain 
idle.  Under  the  present  system,  wherever  land  is  avail- 
able buildings  are  erected  whenever,  in  the  opinion  of 
capitalists,  they  will  yield  a  good  return  on  the  invest- 
ment. It  is  the  efficient  demand  for  buildings — a  demand 
backed  by  rent-paying  ability — that  causes  the  construc- 
tion of  buildings  now,  and  the  same  rule  would  be  oper- 
ative under  the  economic  system  proposed  by  Mr.  George. 

Clearly  the  Single-Tax  would  not  make  for  the  better- 
ment of  the  masses  except  in  so  far  as,  by  the  simplifica- 
tion of  government  it  reduced  taxation.  And  even  this 
benefit,  according  to  Mr.  George,  would  be  intercepted 
by  the  landlords,  for  we  have  already  seen  that  a  reduc- 
tion of  the  government  of  tending  to  abate  monopoly  of 
natural  resources,  would  really  strengthen  it.  We  have 
also  seen  that  the  Georgian  theory  of  state  landlordism  if 
carried  to  the  extent  of  confiscation  of  all  land  values,  in- 
stead of  promoting  progress  by  insuring*,  an  equitable  dis- 
tribution of  wealth,  would  really  retard  it  by  throttling  in- 
dividual enterprise.  A  nation  where  Georgeism  was  fully 
applied  would  scarce  consume  itself  in  revolutionary  fires — 
it  would  simply  petrify. 

According  to  the  census  of  1890,  the  value  of  land  oc- 
cupied by  the  industrial  establishments  of  this  country 
was  only  about  one-third  the  value  of  the  buildings  and 
machinery,  less  than  one-third  the  annual  wages  paid. 
It  constituted  much  less  than  one-fourth  the  total  assets 
of  those  concerns.  Yet  Mr.  George  would  have  us  be- 
lieve that  rent  is  despoiling  both  interest  and  wages — 
that  the  tail  is  wagging  the  dog !  Capital  is  not  in  busi- 
ness solely  for  its  health.  It  is  just  as  easy  to  invest 
money  in  land  as  in  buildings  and  machinery,  and  the 
greater  safety  of  such  an  investment  leads  men  to  accept 
a  lower  interest  than  will  induce  them  to  embark  in  any 
industrial  enterprise.  Even  Mr.  George  notes  this  fact, 
but  its  natural  sequence  has  evidently  not  occurred  to 
him.  How  money  invested  in  land  values  yields  a  smaller 


244  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

return  than  money  invested  in  manufacturing  and  mer- 
chandizing, while  at  the  same  time  the  landlord  is  robbing 
all  active  industry,  Mr.  George  does  not  explain. 

It  does  not  follow,  however,  that  private  ownership  of 
land  is  an  unmixed  blessing;  that  a  man  who  secures  title 
to  a  few  square  rods  in  the  wilderness  is  entitled  to  found 
thereon  a  purse-proud  aristocracy  and  compel  genera- 
tions yet  to  be  to  pay  more  than  royal  tribute  to  his  heirs. 
The  labor  of  the  Single-Taxers  is  not  altogether  in  vain. 
It  has  driven  thousands  to  thinking  on  economic  ques- 
tions— and  "in  a  multitude  of  counsel  there  is  wisdom." 
It  serves  to  keep  the  people  alive  to  the  necessity  of 
guarding  from  the  undue  encroachment  of  concentrated 
capital  the  great  domain  that  has  been  bequeathed  to 
them.  The  political  and  economic  systems  of  a  country 
must  of  necessity  represent  a  compromise  between  con- 
flicting forces  which  hold  each  other  in  check.  Where  we 
have  ultra-conservatives  we  need  ultra-radicals  to  keep 
the  car  of  progress  out  of  the  rut;  and  where  we  have 
the  latter  we  require  the  former  to  prevent  a  reign  of 
wild  experimentalism  that  would  end  in  disaster.  The 
radicals  furnish  the  dynamics  of  civilization  while  the 
conservatives  maintain  the  equilibrium.  In  the  collision 
of  factions  is  generated  light  as  well  as  heat,  and  to  the 
philosophic  ear  there  is  social  harmony  only  in  political 
discord. 


THE    GRAMMAR    SHARP. 

A  party  signing  himself  A.  L.  Jenks  writes  the  Icono- 
clast, pointing  out  a  grammatical  error  in  the  last  num- 
ber of  the  great  religious  monthly.  Thanks,  Jenks.  Even 
the  best  of  us  will  inadvertently  get  over  on  the  haw  side 
of  the  median  line  in  our  syntax  sometimes,  and  I  am 
so  grateful  to  you  for  setting  me  right  that  I  will  not  only 
put  your  name  in  print  and  immortalize  you  as  the  prize 
jackass  of  your  day  and  generation,  but  tell  you  a  little 
story — in  the  humble  hope  that  all  your  busy  tribe  of  pro- 
fessional grammar  sharps  and  pestiferous  pismires  will 
profit  by  it. 

I  served  my  apprenticeship  in  the  sanctum  of  a  surly 
editor  who  was  long  on  ideas  but  short  on  grammar.  One 
day  a  putty-headed  pedagogue  blew  in — one  of  those 
mental  microbes  who  spend  minutes  thinking  what  to  say 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  245 

and  months  learning  how  to  say  it.  He  had  discovered  a 
grammatical  error  in  an  editorial  leader  and  was  gasp- 
ing like  a  duck  with  its  bill  full  of  dried  mud. 

"Mistah  Editor,"  he  exclaimed,  "I  find  a  grammatical 
ehwah  in  your  papah  this  morning." 

"The  h — 1  you  say !"  quoth  the  editor,  who  could  see  no 
harm  in  taking  the  name  of  the  devil  or  his  dominions 
in  vain.  "What  else  did  you  find  in  the  article — any 
ideas?" 

The  professor  assented,  and  the  autocrat  of  the  sanc- 
tum continued  in  a  voice  that  made  the  bristles  of  the 
paste-brush  curl:  "Well,  sonny,  language  is  the  vehicle 
of  thought,  and  if  I  have  succeeded  in  constructing  a 
vehicle  that  will  carry  ideas  into  the  head  of  such  a  blank- 
ety-blanked  idiot,  such  an  irremediable  ass  as  you  are,  I'll 
get  it  patented." 

Do  you  understand,  Jenks?  Can  you  discover  the  beau- 
tiful moral  of  the  story  without  a  diagram?  Right  here, 
Jenks,  I  will  present  you — as  a  worthy  representative  of  a 
considerable  contingent  of  smart  Alecs — with  a  slug  of 
advice  that  is  more  precious  than  fine  gold.  Treasure  it 
tenderly  and  transmit  it  as  a  priceless  heritage  to  the 
Jenkses  of  the  next  generation :  Whenever  you  encoun- 
ter a  grammatical  error  riding  gayly  along  on  a  train  of 
thought,  "Kill  it  and  go  on."  Remember  that  even  the 
good  Homer  nods  sometimes.  If  you  aspire  to  be  really 
useful  go  sit  on  the  bleaching  board  and  watch  an  ama- 
teur game  of  baseball,  bestride  a  dry  goods  box  and  save 
the  country,  spit  at  a  mark,  preach  prohibition,  play 
croquet  with  a  bevy  of  old  maids,  suck  a  cane — do  anything 
but  play  grammar  sharp. 

Another  thing,  Jenks,  and  character  this  in  your  mem- 
ory :  Do  not  take  your  pen  in  hand  and  write  letters  to  a 
busy  editor  just  to  display  your  cuteness.  By  so  doing 
you  encroach  upon  the  preserves  of  Doc  Daniels — Aus- 
tin's meddlesome  little  itch  specialist.  Besides,  the  exas- 
perated editor  may  .expectorate  on  you  and  drown  you. 

But  right  here  a  question,  Jenks:  How  do  you  get  into 
your  clothes?  Do  you  go  into  them  head  first,  then  pose 
before  an  amorous  looking-glass  with  your  mouth  full  of 
pins;  or  do  you  insert  yourself  one  leg  at  a  time,  then 
make  frantic  swipes  under  the  bureau  for  collar  buttons, 
while  the  circumambient  ether  assumes  a  cerulean  hue? 
This  question  is  important.  In  the  unlamented  erstwhile 
the  last  of  the  Apostles  was  bestride  the  editorial  tripod 
of  the  San  Antonio  Express.  One  day  he  sorted  out  of 


246  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

his  mail  a  kick  almost  as  silly  as  yours.  He  had  been  up 
late — attending  a  prayer  meeting  with  Albert  Steve  and 
Oscar  Guessaz — and  his  liver  was  a  trifle  out  of  plumb. 
He  jumped  on  that  kicker  and  recalcitrated  in  return  until 
the  air  was  full  of  fragments  of  flesh.  The  next  day  he 
found  in  his  sanctum  a  beautiful  damosel  with  a  chilled- 
steel  glitter  in  her  bright  blue  eye.  He  opined  that  per- 
haps she  had  called  to  praise  his  latest  "Sunday  Sermon" 
and  present  him  with  a  pair  of  hand  worked  slippers 
several  sizes  too  small;  but  he  was  banking  on  the  wrong 
card.  He  thought  maybe  she  had  brought  a  bunch  of 
blue  forget-me-nots  to  lay  on  his  shrine  and  to  say  that 
she  had  worshipped  at  a  distance  until  her  young  heart 
hurt  her  so  she  could  stand  it  no  longer,'  but  he  was  mis- 
taken. She  had  dropped  in  to  inform  him  that  she  was 
the  party  of  the  first  part  to  the  controversy  aforesaid, 
and  to  lament  the  untimely  demise  of  chivalry.  Now, 
A.  L.  Jenks,  if  the  front  elevation  of  your  name  is  Aman- 
da Louise,  please  understand  that  this  don't  go;  if  it  be 
Abraham  Lincoln  it  goes  with  altitudinous  eclat  and  wild 
acclaim. 

Great  God,  is  it  possible  that  people  will  give  precious 
time  to  such  trifling — with  the  mighty  Universe  yet  to  be 
explored,  the  secret  of  man's  origin  still  enshrouded  in 
mystery,  his  destination  a  mere  matter  of  speculation! 
Let  grammar  sharps  say  what  they  will,  that  phrase  ap- 
proaches nearest  perfection  which  conveys,  with  most 
perspicuity  and  least  jaw-labor,  an  idea  from  mind  to 
mind.  Mortal  man  cannot  afford  to  sit  down  "in  the 
conflux  of  two  eternities"  and  split  hairs.  Life  is  too 
real,  too  earnest,  too  valuable  to  be  wasted  on  the  idle 
subtleties  of  word-mongers.  Fd  rather  have  Samian  wine 
served  in  a  goard  than  putrid  vinegar  in  a  goblet  of  gold. 
The  purists  of  the  present  are  to  progressive  thought 
what  the  scholastics  of  the  past  were  to  religion.  They 
reduce  the  mind  to  a  soulless  machine  which  grinds  no 
grist  for  the  hungry  multitude ;  they  blast  the  fruitful  fig 
tree  with  the  curse  of  their  foolish  criticism;  they  sub- 
stitute manner  for  matter — esteem  the  wretched  vehicle 
above  its  priceless  freight. 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  247 

HEAVEN   AND   HELL. 
THEIR  LATITUDE  AND  LONGITUDE. 

Ever  since  the  idea  of  Heaven  and  Hell  first  dawned 
upon  the  mind  of  man,  he  has  been  trying  to  locate  those 
interesting  ultimates,  to  fix  their  position  in  the  Cosmos,  to 
mark  out  their  metes  and  bounds;  but  despite  infinite  in- 
quiry at  Sibyl-caves  and  elsewhere,  patient  poring  over 
half-articulate  prophecies,  much  labored  lucubration  and 
study  of  the  heavens  by  theologico-astronomic  savants, 
they  still  hover  indefinite  in  the  great  inane,  a  drifting  De- 
los  which  no  scientific  Jupiter  can  finally  fix  and  give  a  lati- 
tude and  longitude.  We  are  accustomed  to  think  of  Heaven 
as  high  above  us;  of  Hell  as  far  beneath  our  feet, — a  freak 
of  barbaric  fancy  that  even  our  super-civilization  cannot 
shake  off.  If  Heaven  be  over  our  heads  at  midday,  what 
direction  at  Night's  high  noon  would  we  take  to  reach  the 
happy  home  of  the  Gods? 

Is  it  not  possible  that  we  are  using  in  this  search  tele- 
scopes of  too  long  a  range, — looking  quite  over  the  objects 
sought  and  into  inane  limboes;  that,  in  fact,  we  need  no  op- 
tical aids,  being  able  to  look  into  the  highest  Heaven  and 
deepest  Hell — even  with  our  eyes  closed;  to  hear  celestial 
harp- music  and  the  rush  of  wings  amid  the  perfumed 
groves  of  Paradise;  to  feel  Hell's  hot  blast  beating  into  our 
very  faces?  Is  it  not  possible  that  Hell  and  Heaven  are 
even  around  us  and  within  us,  visual,  tactual, — here  or  no- 
where ? 

What  is  it  that  we  denominate  Heaven  but  Happiness; 
that  we  call  Hell  but  Unhappiness?  Then  art  thou  not  in 
Heaven  or  Hell  ?  Is  it  necessary  to  pass  the  portals  of  the 
tomb,  to  make  a  long  voyage  on  unknown  seas  to  find 
Pleasure  or  Pain?  What  Pleasure  cans't  paint  with  Fancy's 
most  skillful  pencil  that  transcends  pure  Love  requited? 
What  agony,  mental  and  physical,  cans't  picture  greater 
than  surrounds  thee  on  every  side  ?  Is  it  not  true,  that  even 
here,  in  this  world,  in  this  life,  is  found  the  divinest  Pleasure 
and  the  most  demoniac  Pain — the  highest  Heaven  and  the 
deepest,  darkest  Hell  that  human  mind  can  conceive  ?  That 
even  now  we  flit  to  and  fro  in  Paradise,  harping  and  hymn- 
ing to  an  ever-present  God;  or  wander,  with  blistered  feet 
and  bleeding  hearts,  hopeless  and  helpless,  through  the  des- 
olate regions  of  the  damned? 

Perhaps  if  we  were  all  transported,  Elijah-like,  to  the 


248  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

orthodox  heaven,  many  of  us  would  find  it  much  less  toler- 
able than  this  earth;  would  long  to  return  and  fight  Life's 
bitter  battles  all  over  again;  to  suffer  an  occasional  touch 
of  that  nether  fire  which  sometimes  scorches  and  withers 
us.  Really,  if  the  celestial  immigration  agents  have  put 
forth  a  true  prospectus,  it  is  small  wonder  that  people  cling 
so  tenaciously  to  the  old  homestead,  or,  when  compelled  to 
move,  go  to  a  quite  opposite  direction.  In  old  times  it  was 
supposed  that  angels  relinquished  heaven  for  earth's  pains 
and  pleasures — being  tempted  thereto  by  the  daughters  of 
men;  and  after  carefully  reading  such  celestico-descriptive 
literature  as  can  be  come  at,  one  may  well  wonder  that  the 
whole  Heavenly  Hierarchy  did  not  follow  them,  and  give  to 
Lucifer  and  his  hosts  his  leave  to  return  thither  when  they 
liked. 

How  better  can  we  describe  Heaven  than  by  calling  it 
Content;  Hell  than  by  naming  it  Discontent?  One  man  is 
contented  with  a  crust — finds  Heaven  in  half  a  loaf  of  black 
bread;  another  is  discontent  with  a  crown — finds  Hell  in 
the  wardship  of  half  a  world.  How,  then,  if  men  are  to  re- 
tain aught  of  their  individuality — if  they  are  not  to  be  blot- 
ted out  and  quite  new  beings  created  in  their  places  in 
whom  the  first  parties  can  take  no  more  than  an  idle  inter- 
est— can  we  expect  one  Heaven,  even  though  the  highest, 
to  please  everybody?  How  can  we  expect  one  Hell  to 
prove  a  place  of  pain  to  the  great  multi-minded  host  that  is 
supposed  to  be  drifting  thither?  Really  the  Devil  and  his 
imps  would  prove  quite  pleasant  companions  to  many — 
kindred  spirits  who  take  a  grim  delight  in  defying  Destruc- 
tion itself. 

Stranger  than  even  the  idea  that  we  must  leave  this 
world  to  find  the  face  of  Deity  or  Devil  is  our  method  of 
determining  who  shall  be  given  a  harp  in  the  great  Here- 
after, who  dance  to  music  of  quite  other  making.  We  set 
up  an  arbitrary  standard  of  Goodness;  those  who  comply 
therewith  are  assuredly  destined  for  Paradise,  those  who  fall 
short  thereof  as  certainly  devoted  to  Destruction.  If  a  man 
do  thus-and-so  he  may,  according  to  all  accounts,  read  his 
title  clear  to  mansions  in  the  skies;  if  he  do  not  so,  it  will  be 
the  worse  for  him  in  the  world  to  come.  "To  the  victor 
belongs  the  crown/'  Granted;  but  how  are  we  to  determine 
who  are  the  victors — what  ones  of  the  mighty  host  seeking 
celestial  bays  fought  their  way  through  fierce  foes;  what 
ones  found  no  gorgons  and  goblins  in  their  path,  but 
marched  gaily  through  their  allotted  term  of  life  without 
so  much  as  a  skirmish  ? 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  249 

With  fair  fortune  and  fish  blood  how  easy  it  were  to  be  a 
saint!  With  fortune  of  quite  another  hue  and  every  vein  a 
fierce  flaming  torrent  of  Gehenna-fire,  in  which  Demons 
dance  and  Lust  runs  riot,  in  which  Madness  mingles  and 
Murder  ever  shrieks,  it  were  not  so  easy.  Is  it  not  pos- 
sible that  some  of  the  world's  worst  wage  the  most  relent- 
less warfare  upon  the  great  realm  of  Darkness  and  the 
Devil?  That  while  others  are  making  a  holiday  warfare 
upon  and  putting  to  flight  certain  mischievous  little  imps — 
Satan's  light  infantry — many  of  those  we  call  criminals  and 
assign  to  "the  gallows  here  and  Hell  hereafter,  have  for  long 
weary  years  been  at  very  death-grips  with  the  whole  Infer- 
nal Hierarchy?  battling  without  hope  of  victory,  of  that 
Happiness  of  Despair  and  that  God  like  within  them  that, 
however  choked  by  the  sulphur-fumes  of  war,  however 
torn  and  trampled,  cannot  cry  for  quarter,  will  not  surren- 
der, but,  through  defeat  after  defeat,  fight  ever  on  and  on! 

In  physical  warfare,  where  man'  goes  forth  to  strive  with 
man,  the  world  stops  not  to  consider  who  was  victor  or 
vanquished;  but  rather  with  what  courage  they  fought, 
what  powers  they  contended  withal.  It  were  greater  glory 
to  have  lost  Thermopylae  or  the  Alamo  than  to  have  won 
on  fairer  fields;  yet  in  this  struggle  with  Hell's  puissant 
powers  to  be  overcome  is  to  merit  eternal  infamy!  To*  those 
who  stand — though  they  never  looked  on  Lucifer's  blazing 
banner — imperishable  crowns;  to  those  who  fall,  the  exe- 
cration of  man,  the  curse  of  God!  Around  the  unscarred 
"victors"  we  gather  with  paeans  of  praise,  upholding  their 
hands  in  every  trivial  trial;  but  let  not  those  who  bear  the 
battle's  brunt — upon  whose  unhappy  heads  burst  the  blue 
terrors  of  that  mighty  Cimmerian  cloud — expect  either  aid 
or  comfort,  love  or  sympathy.  Alone  in  that  black  Chaos ; 
mocked  by  man,  torn  by  fiends,  taught  that  even  God  is 
their  enemy,  they  must  struggle  on  to — what? 


ISRAEL  AS  IT  IS. 

There  was  a  time  when  to  have  sprung  from  Judah's  con- 
secrated loins  was  better  than  to  be  born  a  king;  when  the 
embattled  hosts  of  Israel  made  the  world  tremble  before 
their  martial  might,  and  men  turned  for  knowledge  to 
Zion's  holy  hill  as  the  helianthus  turns  its  face  to  the  rising 
sun. 

When  our  ancestors  were  but  brutal  barbarians,  clad  in 


250  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

skins  stripped  with  sharp  stones  from  beasts  scarcely  less 
ferocious;  dwelling  in  caves  and  subsisting  on  roots  and 
raw  meat;  with  no  aspirations  above  the  crudest  creature 
comforts,  no  conception  of  immortality,  no  dream  of  man's 
hig'h  destiny,  Solomon  was  making  silver  as  the  stones  in 
the  streets  of  Jerusalem;  the  Jews  were  worshipping  the 
"Lord  of  Hosts/'  framing  those  laws  which  are  to-day  the 
basic  principle  of  civilization,  quelling  semi-barbarous  peo- 
ple with  the  sword,  computing  the  procession  of  the  planets 
and  weaving  into  the  woof  of  human  history  those  imper- 
ishable gems  of  poesy  and  philosophy  which  the  world's 
wisest  say  transcend  the  genius  of  mortal  man  and  must, 
perforce,  be  the  gracious  gift  of  God. 

Yet  for  twenty  centuries  we  have  regarded  the  Jew  with 
suspicion,  treated  him  as  if  he  were  of  an  inferior  race; 
as  though  in  his  bosom  beat  the  heart  of  an  inhuman  harpy, 
in  his  veins  coursed  the  accursed  blood  of  the  wolf.  For 
twenty  centuries  the  Jew  has  suffered  "the  oppressor's 
wrong,  the  proud  man's  contumely" — has  been  the  target 
at  which  the  ringer  of  scorn  was  ever  pointed;  the  buffet 
of  dissolute  princes  and  purse-proud  potentates;  the  unde- 
serving victim  of  the  blind  wrath  of  the  proletarian  rabble ; 
the  mark  at  which  sectarian  hate  and  unreasoning  bigotry 
have  levelled  their  most  vindictive  shafts;  despoiled,  out- 
raged, beaten  with  many  stripes;  expatriated,  driven  hither 
and  thither,  finding  no  rest  for  his  weary  feet  in  a  world 
which  his  wisdom  has  done  so  much  to  humanize,  to  which 
he  has  given  happiness  here  and  hope  hereafter 

Is  it  possible  that  the  Jew,  who  is  of  the  blood  and  bone 
of  the  patriarchs  and  prophets,  of  Moses  the  Medianite,  and 
those  warlike  Maccabees  before  whom  the  fierce  Syrian 
soldiery  fled  terror-stricken  from  Judea's  hills,  is  a  creature 
fit  only  for  our  contumely,  a  dog  to  be  spurned  by  "Chris- 
tian" feet?  that  the  children  of  men  who,  cooped1  up  in  one 
quarter  of  their  beloved  city  and  dying  of  starvation,  de- 
fended their  holy  temple  against  Titus  thel  Terrible  and  the 
intrepid  sons  of  all-conquering  Rome  until  the  sacred  pile 
was  dripping  with  blood  and  ablaze  with  the  legionary's 
brand,  but  merit  the  sneers  of  a  people  whose  ancestors  a 
few  generations  ago  were  plowing  the  Northern  seas  as 
pirates  in  quest  of  plunder,  or  participating  in  the  bloody 
and  brutal  rites  of  the  Druidical  superstition? 

To  deny  that  there  is  a  widespread  antipathy  to  the  Jew 
were  as  fatuous  as  to  deny  the  existence  of  the  sun.  In 
most  parts  of  the  United  States  this  antipathy  is  latent;  but 
in  Europe  it  not  only  manifests  itself  in  legislation  and 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  251 

social  ethics,  but  frequently  bursts  forth  in  deeds1  of  des- 
perate violence  and  inhumanity  on  the  part  of  the  people. 
Even  while  I  write,  in  "Christian"  Russia  the  Jews  are 
being  despoiled  and  outraged — their  homes  given  to  the 
flames,  their  savings  to  the  plunderer,  their  daughters  to 
the  ravisher,  their  throats  to  the  knife!  And  the  rest  of 
the  so-called  Christian  world  mildly  protests;  intimates 
that,  perhaps,  after  all,  the  Jew  has  a  soul,  at  least  flesh  and 
bone,  and  may  suffer  somewhat. 

While  the  Tsar's  brutal  soldiery — aided  by  the  volunteer 
efforts  of  the  Russian  peasantry  and  such  other  people  as 
consider  the  killing  of  a  creditor  the  easiest  way  to  dis- 
charge an  honest  debt — are  hurrying  the  Jews  across  the 
frontiers,  the  civilized  world  is  firing  whereases,  resolutions, 
remonstrances  signed  by  aldermen  and  fledgling  D.  D.'s, 
silly  tirades  by  alleged  able  editors  and  other  trifling  non- 
sense and  cheap  balderdash  at  his  "Most  Christian  Majes- 
ty;" then,  convinced  that  it  has  done  its  duty,  it  goes 
home  to  dinner — perhaps  with  a  half  defined  feeling  that 
nobody  has  any  business  to  be  a  Jew!  Were  the  people 
of  any  other  race  subjected  to  such  barbarous  brutality, 
the  Christian  world,  so-called,  would  demand  that  it  cease 
instantly,  and  demand  it  sword  in  hand. 

The  cause  of  this  prejudice  against  the  Jew,  which  ap- 
pears to  be  bred  in  the  very  bone  of  "Christian"  people  of 
Indo-European  blood,  it  were  indeed  difficult  to  determine. 
Scarcely  a  count  in  the  formidable  indictment  which  has 
hung  over  him  for  a  hundred  generations  like  a  veritable 
sword  of  Damocles,  will  stand  analysis.  It  is  charged  that 
the  Jew  will  not  intermarry  with  other  races.  In  God's 
name,  cannot  a  man  choose  a  wife  to  suit  himself  without 
having  a  whole  majestic  universe  snarling  at  his  heels?  If 
the  dark-eyed  daughters  of  Judah  prefer  their  kins'men  to 
those  who  from  time  immemorial  have  persecuted  them, 
cannot  a  professedly  chivalrous  world  leave  them  free  to 
choose  ?  Is  it  at  all  strange)  that  a  people  whose  blood  for 
two  thousand  years  has  been  kept  free  fromi  taint,  should 
decline  to  pour  it  into  that  great  red  tide  which  has 
greedily  absorbed  every  clean  and  unclean  thing  with  which 
it  has  come  in  contact,  whether  Goth  or  Moor,  British  bar- 
barian or  American  red  Indian,  and  is  now  blending  slowly 
but  surely  with  the  Ethiop  and  Australian  Bushman? 

But  while  the  incongruous  and  ofttimes  unclean  mixture 
of  races  in  Europe,  and  especially  in  America,  where  the 
great-grandsons  of  Charlemagne's  paladins  wed  the  great- 
granddaughters  of  expatriated  sneak  thieves  and  lousy  In- 
dian squaws — where  the  blood  of  the  Capulets  mingles  with 


252  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

that  of  the  Cades — is  of  itself  sufficient  to  give  pause  to 
those  who  trace  their  lineage  through  God-fearing  men  and 
chaste  women  back  to  the  days  of  David,  it  is  not  the  only 
nor  the  chief  cause  why  the  Jews  maintain  that  solidarity 
which  is  at  once  the  wonder  of  the  world  and  the  burthen 
of  its  never-ceasing  jeremiad.  Their  religion  tends  to  make 
the  Jews  chary  of  intermarriage  with  non-conformists;  but 
the  great  determining  cause  of  their  exclusiveness  is  the 
social  and  political  ostracism  to  which  they  have  for  so 
many  centuries  been  generally  subjected  by  the  "enlight- 
ened," "progressive,"  "Christian"  nations  of  Europe,  and 
which  occasionally  shows  its  ugly  front,  like  Discord  at 
Peleus'  nuptial  rites,  in  free  America,  where  anything  that 
can  dodge  the  gallows  or  the  jail  for  one  and  twenty  years 
is  called  a  sovereign, — where  we  buy  with  our  millions  the 
bastard  spawn  of  kings'  courtesans  as  husbands  for  our 
daughters ! 

The  Jew  was  driven  into  trade  and  money-changing  by 
the  edicts  of  Christian  potentates  forbidding  him  to  acquire 
title  to  land.  In  his  own  country  before  the  diaspora  his 
chief  occupation  was  agriculture,  and  the  law  of  his  religion 
did  not  permit  him  to  lend  at  interest  for  the  relief  of  dis- 
tress. Money  is  power,  even  in  the  hands  of  the  Jew,,  and 
it  is  small  wonder  that  when  he  found  it  his  only  friend  in 
a  world  of  fanatical  foes — the  only  weapon  with  which  he 
could  hope  to  win  his  way — in  sheer  self-defense  he  dili- 
gently soug'ht  to  acquire  all  of  it  possible.  Money  to  the 
Jew  has  ever  meant  much  more  than  creature  comforts; 
it  has  meant  sword  and  shield,  bulwark  and  bastion — the 
magic  wand  that  metamorphoses  the  Medusa-face  of  sec- 
tarian hate  into  that  of  the  oily  and  unctuous  hypocrite. 

It  is  small  wonder  that  in  money  matters  the  Jew  has 
become  preternaturally  keen;  small  wonder  that  in  dealing 
with  his  enemies,  actual  or  potential,  he  should  prove  an 
exacting  creditor — should  acquire  an  unenviable  reputa- 
tion among  his  hereditary  critics  for  sordidness  and  "sharp 
practice."  But  the  avarice,  so-called,  of  the  Jew,  is  the 
result,  not  the  cause  of  centuries  of  political  and  social  os- 
tracism. To  abuse  the  Jew  for  "getting  gain"  were  like 
throwing  a  man  into  a  tempestuous  sea  and  cursing  him  for 
grasping  desperately  at  whatever  may  promise  preserva- 
tion. Numerically  too  weak  to  force  recognition  of  his 
right  with  the  naked  sword,  the  Jew  forges  his  weapon  of 
fine  gold  and  with  it  makes  the  proudest  of  Christian 
potentates  pay  him  homage  with  their  lips  while  they  curse 
him  in  their  hearts. 

So   far  from  being  a  stony-hearted,  avaricious  people, 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  253 

as  popularly  supposed,  the  Jews  are  naturally  the  most 
sympathetic  and  generous  in  the  world.  Who  ever  heard 
of  a  Jew  begging  bread,  going  to  the  alms-house  or  suffer- 
ing for  creature  comforts,  while  other  members  of  his  race 
— even  though  strangers — knowing  of  his  necessities,  had 
a  crust  to  share  or  a  dollar  to  divide?  And  yet  we  "Chris- 
tians,"who  prate  of  our  liberality  and  pose  before  the  world 
as  paragons  of  philanthropy,  ofttimes  allow  our  old  mothers 
to  go  "on  the  county"  while  we  go  on  a  champagne  "jag;" 
permit  our  brothers  to  eat  the  bitter  bread  of  a  stranger's 
contemptuous  charity,  while  we  parade  as  public-spirited 
citizens !  Very  remarkable  is  it  that  while  our  relatives  are 
usually  the  last  in  the  world  we  desire  to  embark  in  busi- 
ness with,  the  Jew  prefers  his  near  kinsman  to  all  others. 
We  know  our  brethren — know  that  they  will  rob  and  be- 
tray, "bullyrag"  and  beat  at  every  opportunity.  The 
Jew  knows  his  brethren  and  trusts  his  fortune  to  their 
hands  without  a  tremor! 

Avaricious?  Miserly?  Little-souled ?  Mean?  Thou  fool! 
The  Jew  is  the  most  liberal  money-spender  in  the  world. 
He  calls  for  the  best  of  everything  and  pays  for  it  like  a 
prince !  Did  you  ever  hear  that  a  Jew  miser  starved  to 
death  in  the  midst  of  his  millions?  That  one  of  the  race  of 
Judah  ever  perished  for  lack  of  medical  attendance  which 
he  was  too  penurious  to  pay  for?  Yet  such  things  are  of 
almost  daily  occurrence  in  this  Christian  land!  But  the 
victim  of  the  unholy  lust  for  gain  is  never,  no,  never,  a  Jew. 
He  may  hide  his  heart  in  his  money-bags,  but  never  follows 
the  example  of  Pedro  Garcia  and  keeps  his  soul  there  also. 

In  every  country  where  the  Jew  has  been  accorded  the 
political  privileges  of  other  people,  he  has  proven  himself 
a  public-spirited  citizen,  and  his  subscriptions  to  enter- 
prises to  promote  the  public  welfare  have  been  paid 
promptly  and  without  protest.  While  the  Christian  has 
given  his  "moral  support,"  the  Jew  has  gone  do\vn  into  his 
pockets  and  planked  down  the  wherewithal  that  "makes 
the  world  go  round/' 

Another  count  in  the  indictment  is  that  the  Jew  never 
really  identifies  himself  with  the  country  in  which  he  re- 
sides— never  becomes  a  patriot;  that  he  is  eager  to  enjoy 
the  rights  of  citizenship  while  shirking  its  responsibilities 
— anxious  for  the  protection  of  a  flag  he  will  not  lift  a  hand 
to  defend.  This  is,  perhaps,  the  most  remarkable  of  all 
the  multifarious  phases  in  which  ingrained  prejudice  and 
hereditary  hatred  has  bodied  itself  forth.  Although  the 
Jewish  contingent  in  our  eleemosynary  institutions  and 
penitentiaries  is  practically  nil,  they  are  largely  supported 


254  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

by  taxes  paid  by  the  Jewish  people.  True,  the  Jew  is  sel- 
dom the  central  figure  at  party  primaries ;  his  voice  rarely 
adds  to  the  discordant  din  of  partisan  polemics;  he  is  sel- 
dom seen  on  the  stump  at  cross-roads  or  the  beer-barrel 
in  bar-rooms,  telling  his  fellow-citizens  what  to  do  to  be 
saved.  He  rarely  makes  of  himself  a  moral  bankrupt  or 
noisy  nuisance  trying  to  capture  an  office  with  small  salary 
and  large  stealage: — but  he  can  generally  be  counted  upon 
to  cast  his  ballot  for  the  "conservative"  candidate  and  pay 
his  taxes  promptly.  Furthermore,  when  he  finds  that 
country  in  danger  which  treats  him  a  few  degrees  better 
than  a  dog,  he  can  be  depended  upon  to  risk  his  life  and 
fortune  in  its  defense.  Compared  with  percentage  of  pop- 
ulation, the  Jewish  contingent  in  the  Federal  and  Confed- 
erate forces  was  very  large,  and  precious  few  circumcised 
soldiers  were  arrested  for  bounty- jumping,  reprimanded 
for  cowardice  or  court-martialed  for  desertion.  Many 
Jews  rose  to  military  distinction  during  the  civil  war,  and 
the  descendants  of  Miles  Standish,  Mad  Anthony  Wayne, 
Light-Horse  Harry  Lee  and  Francis  Marion  were  proud  to 
call  them  their  commanders.  Who  can  forget  the  services 
to  the  South  of  Judah  Benjamin,  or  the  heroic  fortitude 
with  which  the  Jews  stood  by  the  failing  Confederacy  "with 
their  fortunes,  their  lives  and  their  sacred  honor?"  But 
for  the  financial  aid  of  the  Northern  Jews  when  the  tide 
of  battle  appeared  to  be  turning  against  the  Federal  gov- 
ernment and  the  mighty  structure  seemed  tottering  to  its 
fall ;  when  the  British  lion  was  crouching  for  a  spring,  and 
even  France  looked  askance  at  the  wounded  eagle,  the 
mailed  hand  of  the  mighty  North  would  have  fallen'  nerve- 
less as  that  of  a  frightened  child,  the  stars  and  bars  would 
float  south  of  the  Ohio,  and  that  scourge  of  God,  negro 
slavery,  be  fixed  on  this  fair  land  forever. 

Since  the  Jews  became  numerous  in  Europe  and  Amer- 
ica there  has  been  scarce  a  battlefield  not  dyed  with  Israel's 
consecrated  blood;  scarcely  a  military  maneuver  not  paid 
for  from  Jewish  purses ;  scarce  a  throne  not  gilded  by  Jew- 
ish industry;  scarce  a  printed  page  upon  which,  directly  or 
indirectly,  they  did  not  set  their  seal ;  scarce  a  poet  who  did 
not  borrow  their  musical  metaphors;  scarce  an  orator  who 
did  not  tacitly  acknowledge  in  every  sentence  that  but  for 
the  Jews  he  would  have  nothing  to  say. 

From  the  loins  of  Judah  have  sprung  more  intellectual 
giants  than  any  other  race  or  nation  can  boast.  The  roster 
of  those  who  have  added  to  the  world's  wisdom,  to  human 
happiness,  stretches  in  an  unbroken  line  from  the  present 
hour  back  to  the  dawn  of  human  history.  Did  you  ever 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  255 

stop  to  reflect  that  Spinoza,  the  prince  of  philosophers, 
Mendelssohn,  the  master  of  the  world  of  music,  and  a  host 
of  others  whom  we  revere  as  something  almost  more  than 
mortal,  not  to  mention  the  Christ,  whom  we  worship  as  a 
God,  were  all  of  the  race  which  you  profess  to  despise? 
The  cause  of  the  prejudice  against  the  Jews  is  multifarious. 
He  is  emphatically  a  child  of  the  Orient — as  different  from 
the  Occidentals  as  though  native  of  another  planet.  The 
brawny  and  intensely  practical  Scotch  Highlander  and  the 
mild-eyed  melancholy  lotus-eater  could  scarce  be  further 
apart  from  an  ethnological  standpoint  than  the  Jews  and 
the  Indo-Germanic  people.  Race,  political  and  religious 
differences  bred  antipathy  long  before  the  destruction  of 
the  Second  Temple.  Then  as  the  Jews  dispersed  over 
Europe,  came  the  ill-wind  of  business  rivalry,  the  hatred  of 
the  debtor  for  the  creditor  class,  followed  by  the  fierce  fires 
of  religious  bigotry  that  made  of  mediaeval  Europe  a  hell 
upon  which  Cains  Caligula  might  have  looked  with  horror. 
In  those  fierce  Gehenna-fires  were  forged  the  chains  that 
still  hold  the  Christian  mind  in  thrall;  in  those  dark  days 
when  intolerance  was  lord  paramount,  when  superstition 
was  the  handmaiden  of  religion  and  the  Christian  cavalier 
drove  into  the  ground  his  sword,  stained  with  the  blood 
of  non-conforming  maidens,  and  fell  upon  his  knees  before 
the  reeking  cross  that  formed  the  hilt;  when  with  whip 
and  faggot,  the  thumb-screw  and  the  wheel,  fanatics 
dragged  men  to  the  throne  of  Grace,  or  drove  them  to  the 
Devil,  the  vulpine  instinct  of  the  Jew  attained,  perforce,  an 
abnormal  development,  distrust  of  those  not  of  his  race 
and  religion  became  hereditary.  He  found  the  world 
against  him,  and  it  is  his  misfortune,  not  his  fault,  that  his 
hand  is  against  the  world. 

That  the  spirit  of  the  Jews  has  not  been  utterly  crushed 
by  twenty  centuries  of  systematic  oppression ;  that  they  have 
not  withered  beneath  the  terrible  baptism  of  fire,  degener- 
ated into  contemptible  spiritless  lazzaroni ;  that  the  united 
world  has  signally  failed  to  trample  them  beneath  its  brutal 
feet  and  keep  them  there;  that  despite  two  thousand  years 
of  trial  and  temptation,  of  calumny,  intimidation,  of  the  most 
brutal  outrages  recorded  in  Time's  too  unhappv  annals, 
the  daughters  of  Judah  are  to-day  the  paragons  of  purity, 
as  they  have  ever  been  of  beauty,  proclaims  to  every  man 
with  eyes  to  see  and  brain  to  understand,  that  the  Jews  are 
one  of  the  greatest  races,  one  of  the  grandest  peoples  that 
ever  appeared  upon  the  earth;  that  the  Lord  of  Hosts  was 
infinitely  wiser  than  we  when  He  made  His  covenant  witii 
them  and  swore  by  His  own  bright  essence  increate,  that 


256  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

through  good  and  ill,  through  weal  and  woe,  He  would  be 
their  God  and  they  should  be  His  people. 


THE  CURSE  OF  KISSING. 

Every  little  while  some  smart  Alec  scientist  mounts  the 
bema  to  inform  a  foolish  world  that  kissing  is  a  dangerous 
pastime;    that  upon  the  roseate  lips  of  beauty  there  ever 
lurks  the  bacillus,  flourishing  skull  and  cross-bones — ver- 
itable flaming  swords  to  keep  poor  Adam  out  of  his  Eden. 
According  to  these  learned  men  the  fairest  maid  is  loaded 
to  the  muzzle  with  microbes,  her  kiss  a  Judas  osculation, 
betraying  the  sighing  swain  who   dares  to  browse  upon 
her  dewy  lips,  to  well-nigh  certain  death.     In  the  "linger- 
ing sweetness  long  drawn  out"  myriads  of  disease  germs 
are  supposed  to  pass  from  mouth  to  mouth  in  true  reci- 
procity  fashion,   and,   falling  upon   new   and   fecund   soil, 
take  root  and  flourish  there  until  the  ecstatic  fools  pass  un- 
timely to  that  bourne  where  all  faces  stand  so  wide  ajar — 
held  so  by  eternal  hosannahs — that  an  attempted  kiss  were 
like   dropping   Hoosac   Tunnel   into  the   Mammoth   Cave. 
As  the  duly  ordained  guide,  philosopher  and  friend  of  the 
scientists — as  of  the  clergy — the  Iconoclast  feels  compelled 
to  file  a  protest.     As  the  Moor  of  Venice  intimated,  there's 
such  a  thing  as  knowing  entirely  too  much.     Wisdom  that 
knocks  the  yum-yum  out  of  life,  transforms  the  fond  de- 
lights of  courtship  into  an  armed  neutrality  and  makes  of 
the  sensuous  Vale  of  Cashmere  a  profitless  desert  of  dead 
formalities  and  scientific  sanitation,  simply  to  save  the  life 
assurance  companies  paying  an  occasional  premium,  should 
be  sealed  in  some  Pandora  box  or  genie-casket  and  cast 
into  the  sea.     We  cannot  blame  the  bacteria  for  selecting 
as  roosting  place  the  rose-bud  mouths  of  the  daughters  of 
men,  any  more  than  we  can  blame  the  bees  for  hovering 
with  drowsy  drunken  hum  about  the  fragrant  flowers ;  still 
we  were  happier  when  we  knew  not  of  their  presence — 
when  we  could  swoop  blithely  down  upon  a  pair  of  ruby  lips 
working  like  a  patent  clothes-wringer  in  a  steam  laundry, 
and  extract  hyblaean  honey  in  great  hunks  without  Death 
riding  his  old  white  skate  athwart  our  pansy-bed  and  freez- 
ing the  genial  current  of  our  soul  with  his  Svengali  leer. 
W^e  dislike  to  quarrel  with  science,  but  the  tables  educed 
in  the  currency  controversy  now  epidemic  in  this  unhappy 
land  have  made  us  doubt.    Death  may  lurk  in  the  lover's 
kiss  like  a  yellow-jacket  in  a  Jersey  apple;  but  that  scien- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  257 

tist  who  will  go  about  with  his  compound  microscope, 
searching  into  this  tutti-frutti  of  the  soul  for  miniature 
monsters,  is  fit  for  treason,  stratagems  and  spoils.  He's  not 
a  credible  witness  and  ought  to  be  abolished.  He's  the 
Thersites  of  modern  society,  and  we  hope  to  see  some 
wrathful  Achilles  take  him  out  behind  the  smoke-house  and 
talk  to  him  in  a  tone  of  voice  that  would  discourage  a  book 
agent  or  a  poor  relation.  We  don't  believe  a  word  about 
his  little  tale  of  osculatory  woe.  During  a  variegated  experi- 
ence of  forty  years  we've  never  combed  any  tuberculosis 
fungi,  mump  microbes  or  diphtheritic  walking  delegates  out 
of  our  white-horse  moustache.  Kissing  injurious  to  health, 
forsooth!  Why  it's  the  fount  of  perennial  youth  which 
owl-eyed  old  Ponce  de  Leon  sought  among  the  savages, 
instead  of  rilling  his  sails  with  sighs  of  "Gady's  soft  desiring 
strain."  It's  tne  true  Brown-Sequard  elixir,  which  makes 
the  heart  of  hoary  age  beat  forever  like  a  boy's.  It's  the 
heaven-distilled  eau  de  vie  which  causes  the  young  man  to 
forget  a  combination  of  tight  boot  and  soft-boiled  corn  and 
makes  the  grisly  octogenarian  rise  up  William  Riley  and 
neigh  like  a  two-year-old.  Disease  germs,  indeed!  Why 
it's  nature's  remedy  for  all  the  ills  that  flesih  is  heir  to, 
facile  princeps  of  ennui  antidotes,  infallible  cure  for  that 
tired  feeling.  The  latest  pseudo-scientist  to  discover  that 
the  gentle  ripple  df  the  kiss  is  but  a  dirge,  tries  to  set  in 
the  black  overhanging  firmament  a  bow  of  promise.  He 
opines  that  all  danger  may  be  avoided  if  the  kissing  ma- 
chines are  carefully  deodorized  before  and  after  using,  and 
recommends  that  the  lips  be  washed  with  some  chemical 
compound  that  will  make  the  most  obstinate  bacillus  sorry 
he  was  born.  It's  a  great  scheme — but  will  it  work  ?  Will 
our  society  belles  and  beaux  now  appear  equipped,  each 
with  a  bottle  of  carbolic  acid  or  a  jug  of  lime  water  in  which 
to  soak  their  sweetness  before  effecting  that  exchange 
which  is  no  robbery?  or  will  each  parlor  be  provided  with 
a  bowl  of  bacteria  annihilator,  which  the  young  man  will 
employ  much  as  the  careful  cotton  planter  does  Paris 
green?  The  plan  of  disinfection  before  permitting  the 
spirits  to  rush  together  a  la  Tennyson  at  the  touching  of 
the  lips,  may  work  in  Boston,  perhaps;  but  out  here  in  the 
glad,  free  Southwest,  where  we  still  have  to  catch  our  hare 
before  we  cook  it,  such  an  arrangement  would  clog  the 
wheels  of  progress  and  perhaps  extinguish  Hymen's  torch. 
Imagine  the  Apostle  chasing  the  beauteous  Rebecca  Mer- 
lindy  around  a  log  cabin  at  some  husking  bee  at  the  met- 
ropolis of  Harris  county,  a  swab  in  one  hand  and  a  gourd- 
ful  of  carbonated  bayou  water  in  the  other!  Here  in  Texas 


258  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

a  man  must  take  his  kiss  with  the  peeling  on  or  go  without. 
He  has  enough  to  do  to  manage  the  maid  without  bother- 
ing about  the  bacteria.  And,  let  scientists  with  their  double- 
geared  microscopes  say  what  they  may,  that  man  who  gets 
an  opportunity  to  buzz  a  corn-fed  beauty  whose  breath  is 
sweet  as  that  of  a  brindle  calf  fed  on  clover  blooms,  need 
not  worry  about  bacilli.  It  is  a  feast  fit  for  gods,  so 
let  him  fall  to,  without  waiting  to  have  the  bloom  sponged 
off  his  peach  on  the  foolish  hypothesis  that  its  component 
parts  are  horned  hippogriffs,  icthyosauria  and  feathered 
sea-serpents  such  as  hover  in  the  gloom  of  a  gold-cure 
joint  at  2  g.  m.  If  his  heart  fails  him — if  he  be  not  willing 
to  chance  the  <cold  and  silent  tomb  for  the  felicity  of  brows- 
ing for  a  few  fleeting  moments  in  Elysian  Fields — let  him 
follow  the  example  of  the  great  and  glorious  G.  Cleveland, 
Esq.,  and  hire  a  substitute.  There  are  cases,  however, 
where  it  would  be  well  to  do  considerable  deodorizing  be- 
fore risking  osculation;  better  still,  to  let  the  doubtful 
sweets  remain  unplucked,  as  not  worth  the  labor.  This 
great  Yankee  nation  has  fallen  into  the  bad  habit  of  promis- 
cuous kissing — a  social  rite  as  stale,  flat  and  every  way 
unprofitable  as  employing  a  community  foothbrush  or  an 
indiscriminate  swapping  of  gum.  Whether  dangerous  dis- 
eases may  be  transmitted  thereby  I  know  not;  but  it  is 
death  to  sentiment  and  provocative  of  nausea.  A  woman 
should  be  almost  as  chary  of  her  lips  as  of  more  gracious 
favors.  A  sensitive  gentleman  would  as  soon  accept  a 
bride  from  Boiler  avenue  as  take  to  wife  a  vestal  virgin 
whom  every  lecherous  libertine  had  "mouthed  and  mum- 
bled." The  practice  of  ''kissing  the  bride,"  which  still  pre- 
vails in  communities  professing  not  only  civilization,  but 
the  acme  of  aestheticism,  should  be  abolished  by  law  under 
severe  pains  and  penalties.  Why  a  modest  woman,  who 
has  done  nothing  worse  than  marry,  should  be  compelled  to 
kiss  a  company  of  men  and  thereby  sample  everything  from 
the  aroma  of  sour  stomachs  to  masticated  codfish,  I  cannot 
imagine.  The  levite  who  performs  the  ceremony  usually 
consecrates  the  first  fruits  to  the  Lord,  and  what  he  may 
chance  to  leave  is  gleaned  by  Tom,  Dick  and  the  Devil, 
until  lips  that  would  have  tempted  angels  to  assume  mortal 
ills,  become  foul  as  the  Valley  of  Hinnom — sweet  incense 
to  offer  a  loving  lord!  I  once  attended  a  church  fair  in 
Missouri  and  there  found  two  local  beauties  of  good  family 
retailing  kisses  to  all  comers  at  two-bits  apiece — "for  the 
good  of  the  cause!"  "D — n  a  cause,"  quoth  I,  "that  must 
be  forwarded  by  such  foul  means."  I  bought  $5  worth  of 
the  sacred  sweetness — then  hired  an  old  farmer  who  en- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  259 

joyed  a  bad  case  of  catarrh  and  had  worn  his  solitary  tooth 
do'wn  to  the  pliocene  period  chewing  plug  tobacco  and  de- 
positing the  quotient  on  his  beard,  to  receive  the  goods. 
When  half  through  with  the  job  he  struck  for  a  raise  of 
salary!  A  kiss  should  be  a  sacred  thing — the  child  of  a 
love  that  is  deathless.  It  is  the  benediction  of  a  mother, 
the  pledge  of  a  sweetheart,  the  homage  of  a  wife.  Promis- 
cuous kissing  is  a  casting  of  pearls  before  swine,  a  brutal 
prostitution  of  the  noblest  and  holiest  rite  ever  practiced 
by  the  human  race.  It  is  a  flagrant  offense  against  all  that 
is  noble  in  man  and  modest  in  woman;  hence  let  us  hope 
that  it  is  really  conducive  to  disease — that  the  wage  of  sin 
is  death. 


THE  MAN  IN  THE  MOON. 
CRITICISM  BY  OUR  LUNAR  CONTEMPORARY. 

Doubtless  you  have  a  distant  acquaintance  with  the  Man 
in  the  Moon.  He  never  becomes  unduly  familiar,  never 
borrows  money  of  you  or  quarrels  with  you  anent  forms  of 
baptism, — never  bores  you  with  'his  political  views  or  takes 
a  fiendish  delight  in  telling  you  the  unkind  things  which 
others  say  about  you.  When  two  is  company  he  does  not 
make  a  crowd.  He  is  probably  the  oldest  inhabitant,  cer- 
tainly the  most  prominent  citizen  of  our  little  contempo- 
rary. Our  ancestors  saw  him  as  an  old  man  bearing  a  lan- 
tern and  bundle  of  faggots — going  about  in  the  bright  sun- 
light that  illumines  his  home,  much  as  did  our  own  foolish 
Diogenes;  but  whether  on  the  same  errand,  deponent  saith 
not.  What  he  purposed  doing  with  his  bundle  of  faggots 
— whether  to  build  a  fire  to  cook  his  breakfast,  or  broil  a 
heretic — was  never  definitely  determined.  The  modern 
almanac-makers  see  only  the  face  of  the  old  fellow — a 
mildly-beaming  countenance,  somewhat  resembling  that  of 
Mr.  Pickwick,  when  the  moon  is  full,  that  of  a  disappointed 
and  discouraged  office-seeker  when  the  bright  disc  has 
faded  to  a  silver  bow.  For  my  part,  I  could  always  see 
in  the  moon  many  people  besides  an  old  man  toiling  along 
to  a  lunar  nowhere  with  his  bundle  of  faggots,  or  beaming 
down  on  me  with  smile  both  childlike  and  bland.  When 
the  moon  is  full — and  quite  regardless  of  my  own  condition 
— I  can  see  therein  a  gallant  soldier  and  his  bonny  bride, 
two  charming  ladies  in  confidential  tete-a-tete,  and  the 
head  and  shoulders  of  a  gigantic  gladiator  lying  fast  asleep 


260  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

unscreened  by  so  much  as  a  mosquito  bar — the  musical 
attendants  of  Morpheus  evidently  being  undreamed  of  in 
his  philosophy.  And  sometimes,  again,  when  the  moon 
chances  to  hang  at  a  peculiar  angle,  this  variegated  popula- 
tion disappears  and  the  great  disc  resembles  a  mighty 
medallion,  with  Goddess  of  Liberty  clear-cut  and  distinct 
as  on  the  silver  dollar.  The  stars  are  there  encircling  her, 
but  no  E  Pluribus  Unum — not  so  much  as  mention  of  "the 
crime  of  '73."  I've  often  thought  that  could  the  other  side 
of  the  moon  be  seen  a  full-fledged  American  eagle  would 
there  be  found,  squinting  one  eye  at  the  legend,  In  God 
We  Trust — while  keeping  a  close  grip  on  his  bundle  of  ar- 
rows. I  am  satisfied  that  could  Mr.  Cleveland  see  the 
moon  as  I  sometimes  do,  and  note  its  similitude  to  the 
silver  dollar,  he'd  recommend  its  utter  abolition  by  act  of 
Congress  or  employ  the  bond-clippers  to  build  a  golden 
pyramid  for  it  to  rest  upon,  like  a  prize  pumpkin  poised  on 
a  knitting-needle — 

But  perchance  the  handsome  lady  is  the  lunar  "New 
Woman/' — not  yet  provided  with  bike  and  bloomers — who 
has  retired  the  old  man  to  the  nursery  and  herself  assumed 
the  sceptre  of  the  night. 

I  have  tried  to  point  out  to  various  people  the  interesting 
family  of  the  Man  in  the  Moon;  but  they  have  usually  in- 
sisted that  he  was  doing  the  Robinson  Crusoe  act — sailing 
through  space  on  his  silver  isle  in  utter  solitude.  Being  a 
JefTersonian  Democrat,  I  yield  to  the  verdict  of  the  majority 
and  surrender  my  private  opinion,  even  discredit  the  evi- 
dence of  my  own  eyes, — quite  the  proper  thing  from  a  par- 
tisan standpoint — and  shall  take  it  for  granted  that  the  lunar 
Goddess  of  Liberty,  like  our  own  star-crowned  and  mud- 
bedraggled  deity,  is  a  mythus,  the  creature  of  a  morbid 
imagination,  and  devote  my  entire  attention  to  the  time- 
honored  Man  in  the  Moon. 

He  has  evidently  been  there  ever  since  the  swift-rolling 
little  planet  assumed  its  present  topography — perhaps  mil- 
lions of  years  ago.  From  a  period  so  remote  that  the  mind 
of  man  can  scarce  conceive  thereof,  he  has  looked  be- 
nignly down  upon  this  teeming  earth,  with  its  laughter  and 
its  tears,  its  triumphal  arches  and  its-  bitter  ashes — looked 
and  held  his  peace.  He  is  accounted  everybody's  friend, 
because  he  is  no  tale-bearer,  tattler  and  two-faced  talking 
machine;  is  "the  same  yesterday,  to-day  and  forever;"  a 
fact  which  many  men — and  perchance  an  occasional  woman, 
likewise — might  profitably  reflect  upon. 

Nations  rise  and  fall;  religions  are  born  and  die;  the 
Tower  of  Babel  lifts  its  spiral  curves  to  kiss  the  clouds,  then 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  261 

crumbles  into  dust;  Alexander  conquers  the  world  and 
Mark  Antony  casts  it  away  as  a  worthless  bauble  to  bask 
in  the  sensuous  splendor  of  Cleopatra's  eyes ;  Lisbon 
earthquakes  engulf  their  thousands  and  the  French  Rev- 
olutions flame  with  nether  fire — the  Man  in  the  Moon  ob- 
serves it  all  and  makes  no  sign.  How  different  he  from 
the  Man — or  even  the  Woman — in  the  Earth!  Do  but  let 
a  Cleveland  babe  be  born,  or  the  daughter  of  a  prosperous 
map-peddler  take  a  bankrupt  dude  with  bogus  title  to 
raise,  and  there  is  universal  cackle  as  of  multitudinous  flocks 
of  geese  gone  mad.  Let  a  brace  of  pugilists  pound  each 
other  with  pillows  for  a  fat  purse,  or  some  poor  preacher 
bite  at  the  Devil's  hook,  baited  with  an  old  sunbonnet,  and 
what  a  commotion: — people  priding  themselves  on  the 
possession  of  a  thinking  faculty  expecting  the  heavens  to 
fall,  or  the  civilization  of  six  thousand  years  to  slip  its 
trolley-pole.  Let  political  parties — with  adjustable  plat- 
forms and  gutta-percha  principles — indulge  in  wrestling- 
match,  with  the  public  flesh-pots  as  prize,  what  screech- 
ing and  scrannel-piping  by  perspiring  orators  and  partisan 
editors — the  confusion  of  Babe.l  worse  confounded ! 

Sitting  silent  there  all  these  centuries  and  watching  the 
goings  and  comings  of  the  children  of  men — their  mega- 
iopanous  horn-tootings  and  turgid  pufferies,  their  inane 
bickerings  and  infamous  back-bitings — listening  to  their 
ape-chattering  and  eternal  much  ado  about  nothing — has  it 
occurred  to  the  Man  in  the  Moon,  think  you,  that  what  the 
human  race  most  needs  is  a  gold-cure  for  the  gab  habit? 
How  thankful  he  must  have  been  when  the  morning  stars 
sang  together  that  there  were  no  featherless  bipeds  to 
drown,  with  their  foolish  bawling,  the  celestial  melody! 

We  are  supposing,  of  course,  that  the  Man  in  the  Moon 
is  a  living,  sentient  being;  that  the  mild  face  so  long 
turned  upon  this  planet  is  that  of  one  who  sees,  and  seeing, 
understands.  Does  such  a  face  look  down  upon  us  from 
anywhere  in  the  great  Immensity  ?  The  priests  and  prophets 
of  all  ages  have  assured  us  even  so.  They  have  given  to  this 
supernal  being  many  names  and  attributes  and  habitations, 
but  have  signally  failed  to  fix  his  celestial  latitude  and  lon- 
gitude. Gods  come  and  gods  go,  but  the  Man  in  the 
Moon  remains.  He  saw — if  aught  inanimate  e'er  sees — 
the  rise  of  Kishna  and  Kronus,  of  Odin  and  Osiris,  of 
Jupiter  and  Jove;  and  in  serene  and  silent  majesty  he  looks 
down  upon  their  ruined  altars  and  deserted  fanes.  Cults 
and  creeds  have  swayed  the  minds  of  untold  millions — have 
enforced  themselves  with  sword  and  faggot,  with  poison- 
cup  and  persecution  cruel  as  Perdition's  pains — only  to  be 


262  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

swept  by  the  broom  of  Time  into  the  world's  great  rubbish- 
heap  as  intellectual  trash,  and  from  these  mounds  of  muck 
new  dogmas  have  sprung  like  weeds,  and  flourished  their 
little  day,  and  died — layer  upon  layer,  like  cities  rising  and 
falling  upon  the  ruins  of  other  cities  where  men  have  lived 
and  loved — passing,  each  in  its  turn,  into  the  tomb  of  the 
world's  history,  its  traditions,  its  utter  forgetfulness — for- 
ever lost  in  the  murky  shadows  of  the  centuries !  When  Jeho- 
vah has  resigned  to  other  hands  the  sceptre  of  the  universe, 
and  the  Christian  cultus  taken  its  place  beside  the  Babylo- 
nian creeds;  when  antiquarians  trace  with  infinite  toil  on 
ruined  monuments  and  fallen  pillars  the  history  of  this 
proud  Republic,  as  they  trace  that  of  many  a  bygone  nation 
which  imagined  itself  one  of  the  few,  the  immortal  things 
that  were  not  born  to  die ;  when  Macauley's  New  Zealander 
muses  on  a  broken  arch  of  London  Bridge  and  watches 
the  solitary  herdsman  tend  his  sheep  on  the  site  of  the 
world's  metropolis,  as  he  does  to-day  where  Babylonian  gar- 
dens once  did  hang  and  the  lords  and  ladies  of  Nineveh 
rolled  in  gilded  chariots  over  cloth  of  gold — where  Car- 
thagenia's  voluptuous  queen  wept  for  unrequited  love  and 
Priam's  intrepid  sons  begirt  the  altars  of  Ilium  with  bur- 
nished steel — the  Man  in  the  Moon  will  look  down  with 
the  same  imperturbable  countenance  that  he  turned  upon 
the  Buddha  sitting  solitary  beneath  the  Bodhi  tree,  upon 
Hagar  as  she  wandered  forth  from  the  tent  of  Abraham 
into  the  wilderness.  Not  a  line  has  changed  since  he 
beamed  on  Pyramus  and  Thisbe  stealing  forth  to  their 
trysting  place  near  old  Ninus'  tomb — not  a  wrinkle  has  been 
added  since  Joshua  spiked  the  lunar  coat-tail  fast  in  the 
valley  of  Ajalon  while  he  slaughtered  the  Amorites,  de- 
spoiled their  vineyards  and  enslaved  their  virgins. 

If  the  Man  in  the  Moon  would  only  speak,  how  many 
things  he  might  tell  us !  How  the  world's  history  would 
be  revised  and  our  pantheon  of  heroes  and  galaxy  of  saints 
transformed!  During  the  dark  of  the  moon  does  he  hold 
converse  with  that  lunar  Goddess  of  Liberty,  or  New 
\Voman  we  have  observed  there, — her  gaze  turned  intently 
hitherward,  as  tho'  watching  the  progress  of  female  suf- 
frage or  studying  our  Parisian  fashion  plates  ?  Does  he,  in 
post-prandial  sociability  over  his  wine  and  walnuts,  chatter 
unrestrained  with  that  great  gladiator — who  may  be  Her- 
cules resting  from  his  labors,  or  even  the  sun-god  visiting 
his  fair  Salene  and  fallen  fast  asleep  while  waiting  for  her 
to  do  up  her  back  hair  or  put  a  little  celestial  powder  on  her 
pale  cheeks  ?  And  if  so,  what  does  he  say  ?  Can  you  imag- 
ine— he  having  so  carefully  watched  the  genus  homo  ever 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  263 

since  his  advent  upon  the  earth — familiar  with  every  detail 
of  his  origin  and  development?  Is  it  possible  that  he  ob- 
serves us  simply  for  his  amusement;  or,  at  most, 
studies  us  much  as  a  naturalist  might  the  frantic  industry 
of  a  tribe  of  ants?  When  the  lunar  blinds  are  close-drawn 
and  the  stars  given  leave  to  flaunt  their  glories  in  the  face 
of  night,  does  he  make  merry  at  our  expense?  Can  you 
imagine  him  saying: 

"Those  little  bipeds,  straddling  painfully  over  the  surface 
of  our  sister  planet,  amuse  me  very  much.  Do  you  know 
sun,  moon  and  stars  were  made  for  their  especial  benefit — 
that  these  planetary  microbes  actually  imagine  the  world, 
just  as  the  fleas  on  a  monster  dog  suppose  the  canine  was 
created  solely  for  their  comfort — that  the  animal's  frantic 
efforts  to  get  rid  of  them  are  "special  providences"  having 
some  mysterious  tendency  to  promote  their  "ultimate 
good?"  They  really  imagine  themselves  the  only  impor- 
tant things  in  this  great  universe  of  ours — that  the  rest  is 
but  leather  and  prunella. 

"Poor  ephemera,  living  their  little  day,  then  sinking  back 
into  the  soil,  their  bodies  fertilizing  weeds  and  fattening 
worms!  Do  but  observe  them  burrowing  like  moles  in 
their  mother's  bosom ;  trying  to  count  her  ribs  or  determine 
if  she  have  a  heart  of  fire — to  read  her  history  in  the 
freckles  of  her  face.  Miserable  redbugs  on  the  thick  cuticle 
of  the  mighty  planet!  Note  them  sweeping  the  milky-way 
with  petty  tubes  called  telescopes,  or  pondering  with  mag- 
nifying glass  over  a  drop  of  water — the  world  of  other  ani- 
malcttlae  only  somewhat  smaller  than  themselves — then 
founding  pretentious  schools  wherein  they  impart,  with 
birch  rod  and  other  educational  appliances,  the  secrets  of 
the  universe!  Science  born  of  supposition,  philosophies 
founded  upon  fooleries,  stuffed  with  infinite  labor  into  the 
fat  heads  of  half-fledged  ephemera  and  miscalled  educa- 
tion! And  the  wisest  in  the  great  owlerie  cannot  compre- 
hend the  fundamental  principle  of  Nature's  first  and  sim- 
plest law,  that  of  gravitation;  cannot  tell  whence  he  came 
or  whither  he  goes — uncertain  whether  his  ancestors  were 
angels  or  apes!  And  yet  I  have  seen  them  fall  upon  their 
fellows  and  do  them  to  the  death  for  declaring  that  cer- 
tain frog-eyed  and  ass-eared  animalculae  were  incompe- 
tent to  read  every  riddle  in  the  great  apocalypse  of  nature 
— were  not  familiar  with  the  very  family  affairs  of  the 
Creator  of  the  Cosmos !" 

And  so  might  the  Man  in  the  Moon  go  on  maundering 
and  mumbling  century  after  century,  rehearsing  our  faults, 
laughing  at  our  presumption — even  advising  Bo-otes  that 


264  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

when  weary  of  the  chase  and  seeking-  dolce  far  nicnte,  he 
would  find  us  a  curious  if  somewhat  profitless  study  in  bac- 
teriology. 

Of  course  it  were  unkind  of  the  Man  in  the  Moon  to  make 
such  remarks  about  us ;  still,  if  we  could  but  hear,  it  might 
do  us  good  like  a  medicine — enable  us  to  better  understand 
our  small  importance  in  the  economy  of  the  universe ;  to 
get  our  heads  out  of  the  clouds  and  cling-  somewhat  closer 
to  the  grass.  Did  you  ever  reflect  that  to  the  archangels — 
if  such  there  be — "we  are  even  as  the  Lilliputians  of  Gulliver 
to  the  Brobdignagians — mere  trifling-  curiosities  to  be  kept 
in  a  case — what  the  doodle-bugs  or  itch  bacilli  are  to  us? 

Suppose  that  while  idly  lounging  on  heaven's  imperial 
battlements,  Ithuriel,  star-eyed  sentinel  of  the  great  court  of 
God,  should  discover  Brother  Cranfill,  the  abdominous 
apostle  of  prohibition,  assiduously  saving  the  country  by 
spying  about  club-room  keyholes,  stirring-  up  strife  between 
neighbors, — an  abnormal  nuisance,  a  pestiferous  blue-bottle 
buzzing  about  a  putrid  body  politic:  what  think  you? 
Would  the  entire  celestial  population  crowd  the  jasper 
walls,  like  boys  at  a  ball-game,  to  observe  our  poor  crack- 
brained  brother?  Would  they  dispute  anent  his  proper 
entomological  classification,  come  insisting  that  he  was  a 
scarabaeus,  or  terrestrial  tumble-bug,  who  had  misplaced 
his  little  ball  of  compost  and  was  running  frantically  hither 
and  thither  in  search  thereof?  Would  they  send  a  com- 
mittee to  the  Almighty  to  humbly  ask  why  this  amorphous 
curiosity  was  created? 

A  thousand  years  are  to  the  Lord  as  but  one  day;  and, 
by  laborious  inquiry  and  shrewd  guesswork,  we  can  trace 
the  human  race  back  almost  a  week!  Another  seven  days 
on  the  great  horologue  of  God  and  the  genus  'homo'  may  be 
gone  utterly;  but  the  planets  will  continue  to  circle  round 
the  sun,  Orion  and  Arcturus  to  pour  their  mighty  streams 
of  sidereal  glory  into  the  great  realm  of  darkness,  the 
Pleiades  to  "twinkle  like  a  swarm  of  fire-flies  tangled  in  a 
silver  braid."  The  existence  of  the  human  race  is  but  an 
unimportant  incident  in  the  history  of  the  universe — in- 
fusoria born  of  heat  and  moisture,  perishing  when  the 
moisture  is  eliminated  or  the  heat  becomes  greater  or  less. 
Had  man  not  appeared,  the  mountains  would  have  reared 
their  rugged '  crests  to  meet  the  glory  of  the  unrisen  sun, 
the  purple  mists  have  hovered  in  the  valleys,  the  rivers 
rolled  onward  to  the  sea  and  the  tides  ebbed  and  flowed — 
not  a  star  would  have  fallen  from  the  o'erhanging  firma- 
ment, not  a  planet  hesitated  in  its  eternal  course;  there 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  265 

would  have  been  never  a  drop  of  water  nor  a  grain  of  sand 
more  or  less. 

"Lords  of  Creation,"  forsooth!  We  are  the  idle  sport 
of  Time  and  Space.  Yesterday  is  forgotten  and  to-morrow 
is  unknown.  We  toil  and  strive  here  on,  our  miserable 
ant-hill,  transforming  some  particles  of  matter — mere 
planetary  fungi — into  various  shapes;  but  can  create  noth- 
ing, destroy  nothing.  Yet  we  assume  that  Almighty  God, 
who  hung  the  midnight  heavens  with  patines  of  pure  gold 
arid  painted  the  rings  of  Saturn — that  even  he,  Architect  of 
the  Universe — left  his  eternal  throne,  star-gemmed,  cano- 
pied with  clouds  of  incense  upon  which  ever  falls  the  bright 
effulgence  of  solar  systems,  thro'  which  rolls  the  eternal 
melody  of  the  spheres,  came  down  to  earth  and  of  the  cold 
dead  clay  made  a  miserable  biped  and  called  it  his  master- 
piece; that  he  is  now  following  it  about  with,  note-book, 
jotting  down  the  inconsequential  doings  of  this  miserable 
microbe — observing  with  jealous  solicitude  how  it  is  bap- 
tized, what  the  "articles"  of  its  religion,  whether  it  worship 
as  Buddhist  or  Baptist,  Methodist  or  Mormon !  Some  of  us 
so  believe,  thereby  flattering  our  vanity  and  finding  com- 
fort. Others  declare  there  is  no  God,  because  they  cannot 
understand  him — cannot  conceive  of  a  being  without  a  be- 
ginning; attribute  everything  that  is  to  the  operation  of 
blind  force,  as  tho'  force  itself  did  not  have  an  unknown 
and  inconceivable  genesis;  as  tho'  force  without  matter 
were  comprehensible  to  the  human  mind — could  precede 
matter,  and,  operating  on  nothing,  produce  something! 

What  know  the  infusoria  in  a  drop  of  water  of  Caesar 
and  Socrates?  And  what  know  Caesar  and  Socrates — 
hanging,  microscopic  in  body,  infinitesimal  in  mind,  to  their 
little  globule  of  a  world — of  this  great  Universe  of  God 
and  the  laws  which  govern  it?  The  most  industrious  dig- 
ging will  not  disclose  the  foundations  of  the  earth;  the 
most  persistent  star-gazing  reveals  to  us  only  a  few  phos- 
phorescent bubbles  on  the  bosom  of  Infinity's  shoreless 
sea.  And  yet  we  dogmatize  about  the  Deity;  build  elabo- 
rate theories  anent  the  abodes  of  the  blessed;  write  sacred 
books  and  establish  religious  rites  which  we  ask  the  world 
to  accept  as  the  embodiment  of  supernatural  wisdom.  We 
have  conferences  and  convocations,  synods  and  ecumeni- 
cal councils;  we  have  turgid  Talmages,  slingers  of  sancti- 
fied slang,  malevolent  Haydens,  and  Cranfills  puffed  up 
like  the  frog  in  the  fable  with  mephitic  air, — all  pointing 
the  way  to  some  impossible  Celestial  City  where  the  "pore 
mizzable  worm  of  the  dust"  \vill  become  an  imperishable 
butterfly  and  flit  from  flower  to  flower,  doing  absolutely 


266  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

nothing  of  any  importance  thro'  all  eternity — not  even  mar- 
rying or  giving  in  marriage,  a  mocking-bird  without  a 
mate!  And  not  even  Cranfill,  puffing  out  his  "fair  round 
belly  with  good  capon  lined" — while  Gabriel  and  Michael 
stand  agaze — can  locate  that  interesting  ultimate  to  which 
they  would  lead  us ;  can  only  vaguely  assure  us  that  it  is 
"over  there,"  or  "up  yonder" — up  and  down  being  relative 
terms  by  which  we  describe  flagstaff's,  sub-cellars  and  such 
like  protuberances  and  depressions  on  the  earth's  surface. 
Celestial  City,  "up  yonder" — whether  at  noon  or  midnight; 
haven  of  eternal  dilettante! sm  and  yaller  dog  dolce  far 
niente  "over  there" — and  thousands  of  sleek  sky-pilots 
with  Haydenic  heads,  with  Cranfillian  stomachs  nicely 
padded  with  fat  poultry  and  surreptitious  booze  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  stupid  ignorance  and  ingrained  prejudice, 
leading  us  thither  by  devious  routes,  with  toll-gate  and 
oratorical  affliction  every  seven  days'  journey — Colombos 
exploring  the  inane  for  supposititious  Cathays  and  impos- 
sible spice  islands;  blind  leading  the  blind  and  both  falling 
into  the  foul  ditch  of  blasphemous  dogmatism  and  wallow- 
ing contented  there,  imagining  meanwhile  that  they  are 
making  progress! 

And  all  this  time  a  behoofed  and  be-horned  devil  with 
leathery  wings,  fiery  nostrils  and  prehensile  tail  with  javelin 
point — a  kind  of  unholy  cross  between  a  Pasiphaean  mino- 
taur  and  Cleveland  mugwump — resembling  nothing  in  the 
heavens  or  earth  or  the  waters  under  the  earth,  unless  it 
be  the  Chicago  platform — is  going  to  and  fro  in  the  land, 
seeking  new  Jobs  to  afflict  with  festering  sores  and  fool 
friends;  snatching  up  handfuls  of  human  souls  and  flying 
screeching  with  them  down  to  Perdition — for  what  purpose 
only  he  and  heaven  knows.  Curious  creature  this  orthodox 
devil  who  affrights  the  fearful  soul  of  the  evangelist — 
voluntarily  spending  most  of  his  time  in  hell  when  he  could 
just  as  well  spend  it  all  in  Texas.  It  seems  that  the  upper 
and  nether  powers  are  using  this  earth  as  recruiting  ground 
for  their  armies,  Lucifer  obtaining  the  bulk  of  the  able- 
bodied  volunteers,  the  Lord  having  to  content  himself  with 
the  organization  of  amazonian  guards.  What  effect  the 
advent  of  thQ  muscular  "New  Woman"  will  have  upon  the 
strife  between  the  hosts  of  heaven  and  hell  it  were  difficult 
to  determine.  She  certainly  does  not  aspire  to  be  an  angel 
here,  and  if  she  follows  in  the  footsteps  of  her  brother 
hereafter,  Michael  might  as  well  close  his  recruiting  offices 
and  strike  his  colors. 

I  do  not  undervalue  human  life  and  effort  and  aspiration. 
I  do  not  mock  the  blind  struggles  of  mortal  man  to  put  on 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  267 

immortality,  to  master  the  elements  and  extend  the  domain 
of  his  knowledge;  but  I  do  insist  that  those  who  assume 
that  Almighty  God  made  the  solar  system  for  our  sweet 
sakes  should 'be  tapped  for  the  simples.  Surely  the  stupen- 
dous labors  of  the  Creator  were  undertaken  with  grander 
object,  a  nobler  aim  than  the  breeding  on  this  compara- 
tively unimportant  planet  of  a  few  harpers  for  heaven  and 
a  host  of  hoodlums  for  hell.  A  few  million  square  miles, 
flat  as  a  floor,  with  a  fence  around  it  to  prevent  our  falling 
off;  a  sun  ten  miles  in  diameter  and  a  moon  the  bigness  of 
an  Iowa  barn  were  sufficient  plant  for  the  manufacture  of 
men.  Then  why  this  infinitude  of  suns  blazing  in  stellar 
space — this  exhibition  of  power? 

Did  the  Creator  of  all  this  come  down  to  earth  and  flicker 
in  bushes  as  a  fire,  exhibit  himself  for  the  delectation  of  the 
elders  of  Israel  and  spend  forty  days  chiseling  laws  on 
tables  of  stone,  when  he  could  have  traced  them  in  letters 
of  flame  across  the  firmament?  Having  "made  the  stars 
also" — thrown  them  in  as  lagniappe  to  a  hard  day's  labor 
— did  he  send  his  Son,  co-ruler  of  the  universe,  to  be  aggra- 
vated by  human  ants?  Go  to,  thou  wretched  babbler,  and 
put  thy  gall  in  pickle.  Pour  thy  story  into  the  dull  ears 
of  ancient  dames,  and  with  its  marvels  rob  confiding  child- 
hood of  its  pence  to  line  thy  paunch;  but  tempt  not  the 
righteous  indignation  of  reasoning  men. 

All  messiahs,  prophets  and  wonder-workers  were  even 
as  we:  and  they  have  passed,  as  we  in  turn  shall  pass,  back 
into  the  broad  bosom  of  their  mother  earth  to  await  the 
pleasure  of  Him  that  once  did  call  them  forth;  who  can  bid 
them  live  again — for  an  hour,  for  a  year,  for  ages,  during  all 
eternity.  Some  were  wiser,  nobler  than  we,  contained 
more  of  the  element  of  God-hood,  their  lives  a  larger  por- 
tion of  that  bright  Essence  Increate.  Buddha  the  Pitiful, 
Moses  the  Leader,  Mahomet  the  Reformer  and  Christ  the 
Loving,  were  our  teachers.  They  imparted  to  us,  each  in 
his  way,  all  they  knew  of  the  Mystery  of  Life — all  that,  in 
the  profound  depths  of  their  superior  souls,  they  dreamed 
of  man's  origin,  his  duty  and  his  destiny.  Peace  to  their 
ashes.  Tho'  Time  will  sweep  from  the  records  of  the  world 
the  story  of  their  endeavor,  and  even  their  names  sound  no 
more  in  the  ears  of  men,  the  good  they  wrought  will  still 
remain,  the  priceless  heritage  of  the  human  race — fur- 
nishing forth  the  foundations  for  nobler  cults,  for  purer 
ideals,  for  grander  conceptions  of  the  Most  High  God. 

Whether  man  e'er  do  put  on  immortality,  or  his  little 
life  be  rounded  with  ever  dreamless  sleep;  whether  he 
wander  always  in  Elysian  fields,  or, 


268  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

"Greater  than  kings,  than  gods  more  glad, 
The   aching  craze  to   live   ends,   and   life  glides — 
Lifeless — to  nameless  quiet,  nameless  joy, 
Blessed   Nirvana — sinless,  stirless   rest — 
That  change  which  never  changes," 

'tis  well  to  have  lived  and  loved.  Down  upon  thy  knees, 
aspiring  pigmy,  and  give  thanks  to  God  thou  wast  not 
born  a  beast — that  the  best  of  terrestrial  life  is  thine,  with 
the  joys  of  infancy,  the  pride  of  manhood  and  the  halo  of 
age.  Take  the  good  the  gods  provide  and  hold  thy  peace. 
If  it  be  heaven's  will  that  a  happier  world  awaits  thee  be- 
yond the  tomb's  pale  portals,  rejoice  that  thou  art  rewarded 
beyond  thy  deserts ;  if  not,  lie  down  like  a  tired  child 
upon  its  mother's  breast,  and  pass  without  a  sigh  into  the 
eternal,  the  imperishable  elements  from  which  thou  wert 
called — back  into  the  great  Life  Ocean  which  is  God. 

"The  dew  is  on  the  lotus;  rise  Great  Sun, 
And  lift  my  leaf  and  mix  me  with  the  wave. 
Om   Mani    Padme   Hum,   the   sunrise  comes- 
The  dewdrop  slips  into  the  shining  sea!" 


THE  NEW  WOMAN. 
BEAUTY  AND  BLOOMERS. 

The  new  woman  is  the  target  at  which  editors  and 
artists  are  just  now  leveling  a  world  of  would-be  wit  and 
abortive  ridicule.  She  is  usually  depicted  in  the  periodi- 
cals as  a  biped  of  doubtful  gender,  who  apes  the  customs 
and  clothing  of  creation's  lords  and  aspires  to  manage  the 
political  and  social  world  to  suit  herself.  She  is  supposed 
to  be  intensely  "strong-minded"  and  devoid  of  sentiment 
as  a  bale  of  hay — quite  the  antithesis  of  the  soft,  clinging 
creature  who  once  made  glad  the  heart  of  man  by  hanging 
her  second  providence  upon  him  and  sitting  contentedly 
down  to  the  manipulation  of  buttons  and  the  rearing  of 
babes.  According  to  the  analytical  editors,  she  cares  never 
a  copper  for  the  command  to  be  fruitful  and  multiply — -is 
simply  an  educated  ice-berg  who  prefers  billiards  and  bike- 
ing  to  the  triumphs  of  beauty,  club  life  to  domestic  cares, 
and  would,  if  opportunity  offered,  use  Hymen's  torch  in  a 
political  parade  and  leave  the  later  Adam  without  that 
"helpmeet"  which  the  good  God  gave  him  on  observing 
his  utter  inability  to  take  care  of  himself. 

The  New  Woman  of  the  smart  paragraph  builders  and 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  269 

box-wood  butchers  may  be  one  differentiation  of  the  genus; 
but  fortunately  this  species  is  about  as  rare  as  white  black- 
birds— or  editors  with  an  idea  above  partisan  politics.  The 
New  Woman  is  really  a  very  charming  creature,  and  there 
is  little  likelihood  that  she  will  become  either  too  few  or  too 
numerous.  She  is  simply  a  hard-sensed  young  lady  who 
politely  but  pointedly  declines  to  play  second  fiddle  in  the 
great  diapason  of  humanity — to  be  bound  by  the  foolish 
fashions  and  inept  customs  that  have  cursed  her  sex  for 
sixty  centuries.  She  does  not  object  to  matrimony,  but 
declines  to  regard  the  capture  of  some  sap-headed  dude 
with  a  few  dollars  as  the  end  and  aim  of  her  existence.  Her 
ideals  of  wifehood  and  motherhood  are  too  exalted  to  permit 
her  sitting  supinely  down  on  the  matrimonial  block;  like 
Patience  on  a  monument,  and  waiting  for  some  bumptious 
he-thing  to  straddle  along  who  will  consent  to  supply  her 
with  board  and  clothes — in  consideration  of  the  surrender 
of  her  freedom  and  the  debauchment  of  her  beauty.  She 
prefers  to  gird  up  her  patent  health  corset  and  go  out  into 
the  world  to  hustle  her  own  hash  until,  from  the  great 
Somewhere  of  her  waking  dreams,  her  ideal  comes  to  make 
of  her  a  loving  companion  instead  of  a  legal  concubine. 
Calphurnia  will  be  Caesar's  wife,  meriting  his  confidence 
'and  dividing  his  care,  rioting  in  his  love  and  rich  in  his 
respect,  or  she'll  be  naught  to  him. 

Such  is  the  New  Woman,  who  stands  forth  in  her 
matchless  beauty  and  modest  pride,  undaunted  by  the  puny 
arrows  of  a  tribe  of  journalistic  pigmies.  For  ages  woman 
was  but  man's  plaything,  her  occupation  the  amusement  of 
his  idle  hours — valuable  chiefly  for  breeding  purposes.  The 
highest  educational  advantages  were  denied  her,  the  profes- 
sions closed  against  her  as  an  incapable.  Her  talents  were 
supposed  to  be  small,  and  little  opportunity  was  offered  for 
their  enlargement.  But  as  the  world  grew  wiser  it  became 
more  liberal.  One  by  one  the  foolish  barriers  that  cir- 
cumscribed her  usefulness  have  fallen,  and  she  has  pressed 
eagerly  forward  into  the  widening  field.  If  she  has  not 
proven  herself  man's  intellectual  peer  she  has  ceased  to  be 
a  pensioner  on  his  bounty, — has  demonstrated  her  ability 
to  earn  her  bread — and  with  independence  have  come 
grander  ideals,  loftier  aims,  nobler  womanhood. 

The  real  New  Woman  is  self-reliant  without  being  man- 
nish, modest  without  prudery  and  companionable  while 
avoiding  that  familiarity  which  breeds  contempt.  But 
there  is  quite  a  different  creature  abroad,  upon  which  the 
press  delights  to  confer  a  title  to  which  she  can  lay  no 
claim — the  fashionable  butterfly  and  professional  fad-chaser, 


270  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

whose  newness  consists  chiefly  in  novelty  of  dress,  the  busi- 
ness of  whose  life  is  to  make  as  liberal  a  display  of  her 
personal  charms  as  may  be  consistent  with  a  kind  of  india- 
rubber  respectability.  The  first  has  demonstrated  that 
woman  may  possess  brains;  the  latter  has  made  it  manifest 
that  she  must  have  legs!  The  latter  fact  has  long  been 
suspected  even  by  the  exoteric  school  of  bashful  bachelors. 
It  has  been  darkly  hinted  from  time  to  time  by  divers  sci- 
entific gentlemen  that  woman  is  a  bipedal  being  who 
achieves  locomotion  by  advancing  one  foot  before  the 
other,  instead  of  gliding  through  the  air  like  a'  gilded  moth 
or  sliding  about  the  surface  of  the  earth  like  a  drop  of 
quicksilver;  but  it  remained  for  the  fad-follower  to  put 
her  physique  in  evidence  and  thereby  dispel  all  doubt. 

Now  that  feminine  underpinning  is  an  accepted  fact, — a 
truth  revealed — we  may  pause  to  consider  whether  we  are 
the  happier  for  our  new  got  knowledge.  Candor  compels  the 
confession  that  we  are  not  particularly  grateful  to  the  fad- 
follower  for  her  startling  exhibitions  of  locomotive  loveli- 
ness— that  tttiere  may  be  too  much  even  of  a  good  thing. 
The  poet  assures  us  that, 

"Spring  would  be  but  gloomy  weather 
If  there  was  nothing  else  but  Spring." 

And  he  might  have  told  us,  with  equal  truth,  that  an  end- 
less procession  of  perambulating  living  pictures  would  pall 
on  the  ocular  appetite  and  pro'duce  that  tired  feeling.  The 
female  limb  is  unquestionably  a  thing  of  beauty  and  a  joy 
forever;  but  we  would  have  been  far  happier  ihad  the  dizzy 
fin  de  siecle  devotee  of  fashion  not  called  the  world's  atten- 
tion to  it.  Had  she  kept  it  hidden  we  might,  in  the  fullness 
of  time,  have  found  it  out  ourselves  and  enjoyed  the  felicity 
of  a  glad  surprise.  Her  gratuitous  anatomical  exhibit 
argues  a  lack  of  enterprise  on  the  part  of  creation's  lords 
that  is  quite  exasperating. 

I  have  no  desire  to  interfere  with  the  sartorial  liberty  of 
the  ladies;  I  would  simply  call  their  attention  to  the  fact 
that  a  costume  which  half  reveals,  half  conceals  the  female 
form  divine,  is  far  more  fetching  than  one  which  supplants 
theories  with  conditions  and  deprives  Fancy  of  her  occu- 
pation. The  twinkle  of  a  pretty  foot  peeping  coyly  forth 
beneath  a  dainty  petticoat;  the  fleeting  glimpse  of  a  well- 
turned  ankle  in  a  billowy  sea  of  lace  were  enough  to  make 
a  stoic  grab  a  goose-quill  and  reel  off  erotic  poetry  by  the 
ream — to>  transform  the  veriest  Reuben  into  a  soulful  Ana- 
creon;  but  what  minstrel,  filled  to  overflowing  with  the  di- 
vine afflatus,  could  tune  his  lyre  or  build  an  Ella  Wheeler 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  271 

ode  in  honor  of  a  pair  of  bloomers  ?  Why,  at  sight  of  such 
an  apparition  immortal  Pegasus  would  balk  and  buck  like 
Mark  Twain's  Mexican  plug!  Had  Petrarch's  Laura  worn 
pants  the  dago  nightingale  would'  have  come  off  his  perch ; 
had  Heloise  donned  the  divided  skirt  no  heart-sore  pilgrim 
would  pour  his  scalding  tears  into  her  storied  urn;  had 
Helen  of  Troy  paddled  about  the  Isles  of  Greece  in  fin  de 
sicclc  bathing-suit  the  Bard  of  Chios  had  not  tuned  his  im- 
mortal harp  nor  Priam's  hoary  head  'have  sunk  beneath 
the  sword'.  Think  of  burning  Sappho  in  tan-colored  leg- 
gings taking  the  Lover's  Leap;  of  Bonnie  Annie  Laurie  in 
bloomers — of  Juliet  with  a  sea-green  patch  on  the  rear  ele- 
vation of  her  scorched  banana  biking  suit !  Had  such  mon- 
strosities appeared  on  Parnassus,  the  muses  would  have 
been  stricken  dumb — perhaps  have  drowned  themselves  in 
the  Pierian  Spring. 

If  the  fashionable  young  female — who  is  no  more  the 
New  Woman  than  she  is  the  Old  Adam — is  dressing  to 
please  herself,  we  have  nothing  to  say ;  but  if  she  is  decking 
out  to  gladden  the  hearts  of  the  sterner  sex  we  (hereby 
advise  her  in  strict  confidence  that,  as  the  rival  of  the  bal- 
let-girls and  vaudeville  beer-slingers,  she  is  a  glittering 
failure.  Whether  biking  or  surf-bathing,  clucking  at  a 
political  hen  convention  or  dress  reform,  congress,  she  is 
an  inartistic  hermaphroditical  hoo-doo  that,  while  causing 
the  unskillful  to  laugh,  must  make  the  judicious  grieve.  In 
matters  sartorial  progress  and  improvement  are  not  always 
synonyms.  The  abbreviated  skirt  may  be  more  healthful 
than  the  pyramidal  petticoat ;  but  it  makes  a  woman  an 
offensive  freak,  an  eyesore  to  the  artist,  an  uncanny  night- 
mare to  all  men  with  a  correct  conception  of  the  eternal 
fitness  of  things.  The  reckless  display  of  personal  charms 
by  the  woman  of  fashion — her  double-entendre  decollete 
— is  not  calculated  to  promote  elevation  of  thought  or  purity 
of  action — could  occur  only  in  a  society  already  corrupt. 

It  may  be  urged  in  extenuation  of  the  offense  against 
the  canons  of  good  taste  that  modesty  in  costume  is  a 
mere  matter  of  custom ;  that  had  the  ladies  for  a  century  or 
so  worn  bloomers — or  even  breeches — the  world  would 
consider  it  quite  the  proper  thing  because  accustomed  to 
it;  that  had  they  suddenly  exchanged  such  garb  for  the  mod- 
ern ball-room  gown,  all  the  prudes  in  bloomers  —  or 
breeches — would  have  tearfully  protested,  and  the  female 
pharisees — with  leathery  arms  and  busts  built  like  a  jaun- 
diced clap-board — thanked  God  they  were  not  as  other  peo* 
pie.  This  may  be  true,  for 

"That  monster  custom,  of  habits  devil," 


272  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

can  inure  us  to  almost  anything,  however  outre  or  inar- 
tistic. A  man  who  had  never  seen  a  rose  might  regard  a 
red  holly-hock  as  the  acme  of  floral  perfection;  having 
never  seen  a  female  figure  tastefully  draped,  he 
might  contemplate  even  bloomers  with  satisfaction;  but  I 
doubt  if  he  could  regard  the  wearer  with  that  chivalric 
adoration  which  has  placed  woman  but  little  lower  than  the 
angels.  He  would  doubtless  consider  her  "a  jolly  good 
fellow,"  and  enjoy  her  society  to  a  certain  extent;  but 
that  courteous  deference  which  distinguishes  him  could 
scarce  develop — he  would  make  few  sacrifices  for  her  sake. 
Had  such  been  the  fashion,  love  would  have  remained  but 
lust  and  marriage  simply  a  civil  contract.  Had  Queen 
Elizabeth  worn  bloomers,  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  Bright-have 
bridged  a  mudpuddle  for  her  with  tfris  costly  cloak;  but 
more  likely  he  would  have  told  her  to  climb  upon  his  back. 
Lci-ander  might  have  swam  the  tempestuous  Hellespont  to 
bask  in  the  smiles  of  a  beauty  clad  only  in  breeches ;  but  I 
think  he  would  have  waited  for  the  boat. 


SLAVE  OR  SOVEREIGN. 
STATUS  OF  THE  AMERICAN  CITIZEN. 

[Synopsis  of  an  address  delivered  by  Mr.  Brann,  August  10,  1895.] 

Fellow  citizens:  If  I  had  a  million  o'  money — carefully 
protected  from  the  income  tax  by  a  plutocratic  supreme 
court — I  would  probably  not  be  here  to  inquire  whether 
you  are  Slaves  or  Sovereigns.  And  if  you  could  draw  your 
check  for  seven  figures — with  any  probability  of  getting  it 
cashed — you  would  not  be  here  to  answer.  You'd  do  just 
as  Dives  did:  lean  back  in  your  luxurious  chair  and  absorb 
your  sangaree,  while  Lazarus  scratched  his  Populist  fleas 
on  your  front  steps  and  exploited  your  garbage  barrels  for 
bones.  You'd  turn  up  your  patrician  nose  at  the  lowly 
proletaire,  and  if  he  did  but  hint  that,  having  created  this 
world's  wealth,  he  was  entitled  to  something  better  than 
hand-outs,  you'd  have  an  anti-communistic  cat-fit  and  de- 
nounce him  as  an  insolent  hoodlum)  who  should  be  com- 
fortably hanged.  That's  human  nature  to  a  hair,  and  you 
are  all  human, — I  suppose — even  if  the  politicians  do  buy 
you  with  gas  and  sell  you  for  gold. 

I  tell  you  frankly  that  I'm  complaining,  not  because  of 
the  other  fellow's  colossal  fortune,  but  because  I  can't 
strike  the  plutocratic  combination.  I'm  dreadfully  anxious 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  273 

to  accumulate  a  modest  fortune — of  about  fifty  millions — 
that  I  may  build  a  comfortable  orphan  asylum  for  that  vast 
contingent  of  Democratic  politicians  whom,  the  next  elec- 
tion will  deprive  of  their  "pap." 

I'm  no  philanthropist  who's  trying  to  reform  the  world 
for  the  fun  of  the  thing — who's  willing  to  starve  to  death 
for  the  sake  of  an  attractive  tombstone.  I  want  to  so 
amend  industrial  conditions  that  I  won't  have  to  'hustle  so 
hard — and  so  long — between  meals;  and  when  they  are 
bettered  for  me  they  will  be  bettered  for  you,  and  for  every 
man  who — with  pick  or  pen,  brain  or  brawn — honestly  earns 
his  daily  bread. 

I  want  more  holidays;  more  time  to  sit  down  and  reflect 
that  it  is  good  to  be  alive;  more  time  to  go  fishing — not 
fishing  for  men,  but  for  sure-enough  suckers.  Here  in  Amer- 
ica if  the  average  mortal  aspires  to  fill  a  long-felt  want 
with  first-class  fodder,  he's  got  to  chase  the  almighty  dol- 
lar on  week-days  like  a  hungry  coyote  camping  on  the 
trail  of  a  corpulent  jack-rabbit,  and  spend  Sunday  figur- 
ing how  to  circumvent  his  fellow-citizen.  Life  with  the 
American  people  is  one  continual  hurry  and  rush  from  the 
cradle  to  the  grave.  We're  born  in  a  hurry,  live  by  elec- 
tricity and  die  with  scientific  expedition.  Half  of  us  don't 
take  time  to  become  acquainted  with  our  own  'families. 
We've  even  got  to  courting  by  telephone,  and  I  expect  to 
see  some  enterprising  firm  put  up  lover's  kisses  in  tablet 
form,  so  that  they  can  be  carried  in  the  vest  pocket  and 
absorbed  while  we  figure  cent  per  cent  or  make  out  a 
mortgage. 


For  a  score  of  years  I  had  been  listening  to  the  boast 
of  the  American  people  that  they  were  Sovereigns  by  right 
divine,  and  at  last  it  occurred  to  me  to  swear  out  a  search- 
warrant  for  my  crown  and  go  on  a  still-hunt  for  my  scep- 
tre;  but  soon  found  that  the  jewels  of  my  throne-room,  the 
rod  of  my  authority  and  my  purple  robe  of  office  were  con- 
spicuous by  their  absence  and  I  wasn't  married  at  the  time 
either.  The  American  citizen  is  a  sovereign,  not  to  the  ex- 
tent of  his  voice  and  vote,  but  to  the  exact  amount  of  Uncle 
Sam's  illuminated  mental  anguish  plasters  at  his  command. 
Money  is  lord  paramount,  Mammon  our  prophet,  our  god 
the  golden  calf. 

The  dollar  is  indeed  "almighty."  It's  the  Archimedean 
lever  that  lifts  the  ill-bred  boor  into  select  society  and 
places  the  ignorant  sap-head  in  the  United  State  Senate. 
It  makes  presidents  of  "stuffed  prophets,"  governors  of 


274  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

intellectual  geese,  philosophers  of  fools  and  gilds  infamy 
itself  with  supernal  glory.  It  wrecks  the  altars  of  inno- 
'cence  and  pollutes  the  fanes  of  the  people,  breaks  the  sword 
of  Justice  and  binds  the  Goddess  of  Liberty  with  chains  of 
gold.  It  is  lord  of  the  land,  the  uncrowned  king  of  the 
commonwealth,  and  its  whole  religious  creed  is  comprised 
in  the  one  verse,  "To  him  that  hath  shall  bei  given  and  he 
shall  have  abundance,  while  from  him  that  hath  not  shall 
be  taken  even  that  which  he  hath." 

"We,  the  people,  rule" — in  the  conventions;  but  our  del- 
egated lawmakers  have  a  different  lord.  In  1892  we  de- 
manded "tariff  reform"  with  a  whoop  that  shook,  the  im- 
perial rafters  of  heaven,  and  declared  for  the  minting  of 
gold  and  silver  without  discrimination  against  either  metal. 
But  our  so-called  "public  servants,"  instead  of  hastening 
to  obey  our  behests,  spent  months  manufacturing  excuses 
for  disregarding  their  duty.  Placed  between  the  devil  of 
the  money  power  and  the  deep  sea  of  public  opinion,  they 
wobbled  in  and  they  wobbled  out  like  a  drunken  boa-con- 
strictor taking  its  jag  to  a  gold  cure  joint.  They  were  like 
the  little  boy  who  put  his  trousers  on  t'other  side  to — we 
couldn't  tell  whether  they  were  going  to  school  or  coming 
home.  But  our  doubts  were  all  dispelled  last  November. 
They  were  coming  home — and  they  were  coming  to  stay. 
We  are  the  fellows  who  were  going  to  school — to  that 
school  of  experience  where  fools  are  educated. 


Slave  or  Sovereign?  The  last  is  an  individual  entity,  a 
controlling  power,  his  will  is  law.  The  first  goes  and 
comes,  fetches  and  carries  at  the  command  of  a  master; 
creating  wealth  he  may  not  possess,  bound  by  laws  he 
does  not  approve,  dependent  upon  the  pleasure  of  others 
for  the  privilege  of  breaking  bread.  Is  not  the  latter  con- 
dition that  of  a  majority  of  the  American  people  to-day? 
Are  they  not  at  the  subsequent  end  of  a  financial  hole,  the 
sides  soaped  and  never  a  ladder  in  sight? 

In  a  country  so  favored — a  veritable  garden  of  the  gods, 
where  every  prospect  pleases  and  not  even  the  politician 
is  wholly  vile — the  lowliest  laborer  should  be  a  lord,  and 
each  and  all  find  life  well  worth  the  living.  But  it  is  not 
so.  People  starve  while  sunny  savannas,  bursting  with  fat- 
ness, yield  no  food;  they  wander  houseless  thro'  summer's 
heat  and  winter's  cold,  while  great  mountains  of  granite 
comb  the  fleecy  clouds  and  the  forest  monarch  measures 
strength  with  the  thunderstorm;  they  flee  naked  and 
ashamed  from  the  face  of  their  fellow-men  while  fabrics 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  275 

moulder  in  the  market-place  and  the  song  of  the  spindle  is 
silent;  they  freeze  while  beneath  their  feet  are  countless 
tons  of  coal — incarnate  kisses  of  the  sun-god's  fiery  youth; 
they  have  never  a  spot  of  earth  on  which  to  plant  a  vine  and 
watch  their  children  play — where  they  may  rear  with  loving 
hands  lowly  roof  and  rule,  lords  of  a  little  world  hemmed  in 
by  the  sacred  circle  of  a  home ;  yet  the  common  heritage  in 
the  human  race  lies  fair  before  them  and  there  is  room 
enough. 

The  people  of  Texas  do  not  realize  how  terrible  is  the 
industrial  condition  of  the  world  to-day — how  wide  the 
gulf  that  separates  Dives  and  Lazarus,  how  pitiful  the 
poverty  of  millions  of  their  fellow  men.  The  Texas  mer- 
chant complains  of  dull  trade,  the  farmer  of  low  prices, 
the  mechanic  of  indifferent  wages:  yet  Texas  is  the  most 
favored  spot  on  the  great  round  earth  to-day.  I  defy  you 
to  find  another  portion  of  the  globe  of  equal  area  and  pop- 
ulation where  the  wealth  is  so  well  distributed,  where  so 
few  people  go  hungry  to  bed  without  prospect  of  break- 
fast. But  the  grisly  gorgon  of  Greed  and  the  gaunt  spec- 
tre of  Need  are  coming  West  and  South  in  the  wake  of  the 
Star  of  Empire.  Already  Texas  has  begun  to  breed  mil- 
lionaires and  mendicants,  sovereigns  and  slaves.  Already 
we  have  an  aristocracy  of  money,  in  which  wealth  makes 
the  man  and  want  of  it  the  fellow,  and  year  by  year  it  be- 
comes easier  for  Dives  to  add  to  his  hoard  and  for  Lazarus 
to  starve  to  death. 

We  appeal  to  New  York  for  capital  with  which  to  de- 
velop our  resources ;  and  New  York  has  it  in  abundance — 
countless  millions  she  is  eager  to  let  out  at  usury;  yet  it  is 
estimated  that  ten  thousand  children  perish  in  that  city 
every  year  of  the  world  for  lack  of  food — and  how  many 
are  kept  alive  by  the  bitter  bread  of  a  contemptuous  char- 
ity God  only  knows.  In  one  year  3,000  children  were  de- 
barred from  the  public  schools  of  Chicago  because  of  lack 
of  clothing  to  cover  their  nakedness — and  Chicago  boasts 
herself  "the  typical  American  city."  The  despised  Salva- 
tion Army  trying  to  feed  a  thousand  homeless  and  hungry 
men  on  the  sandlots  of  San  Francisco  proves  that  already 
the  curse  has  travelled  across  the  continent. 

And  people  who  are  not  only  permitted  to  run  at  large, 
but  actually  elected  to  office,  prattle  of  "overproduction" — 
while  people  are  starving  in  nakedness;  proposes  to  elim- 
inate pauperism  and  inaugurate  the  industrial  millennium 
by  placing  fiddle-strings  on  the  free-list  or  increasing  the 
tariff-tax  on  toothpicks — to  relieve  the  country  of  the  com- 


276  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

mercial  jim-jams  by  means  of  the  gold  cure.    And  the  fool- 
killer  still  procrastinates! 


The  American  citizen  is  called  a  sovereign — by  those 
patriots  who  are  preparing  to  sacrifice  themselves  on  the 
altar  of  a  nice  fat  office.  And  perhaps  he  is;  'but  I'm  free. 

We  are  frequently  told  that  the  condition  of  labor  is  bet- 
ter -to-day  than  a  century  ago.  That  is  half  a  truth,  yet 
wholly  a  falsehood.  A  century  ago  the  workman  knew 
naught  of  many  comforts  and  conveniences  he  now  en- 
joys— when  he  happens  to  have  a  job;  but  that  was  one 
age,  this  quite  another.  Progress  gives  no  man  new  wants, 
and  the  luxuries  of  one  generation  become  the  necessities 
of  the  next.  To  deny  this — to  limit  the  laborer  to  actual 
necessaries  as  measured  by  a  former  age — were  to  relegate 
him  back  to  barbarism,  to  nomadism  and  nakedness.  If 
we  should  be  content  with  what  our  fathers  had,  then  they 
should  have  been  satisfied  with  the  comforts  enjoyed  by 
their  progenitors,  and  so  on  back  until  man  digs  roots 
with  his  finger  nails,  attires  himself  in  a  streak  of  red 
paint  for  winter  overcoat  and  a  few  freckles  for  summier 
ulster.  It  is  by  comparison  with  his  fellows  and  not  with 
his  fathers  that  man  determines  whether  he's  fortunate  or 
unfortunate — •whether  he's  receiving  his  proper  proportion 
of  the  world's  increase  of  wealth.  A  century  ago  t'here 
was  no  such  glaring  inequality  as  now  exists.  There  were 
no  fifty  million  dollar  fortunes  and  no  free-soup  joints.  If 
the  workman's  piano  was  a  jews-harp  and  his  Pullman 
car  a  spavined  cayuse,  his  employer  was  not  erecting  pal- 
aces in  which  to  stable  his  blooded  stock,  nor  purchasing 
dissolute  princes  for  his  daughters  to  play  at  marriage  and 
divorce  with.  If  the  farmer's  wife  wore  linsey-woolsey 
and  went  barefoot  to  save  her  shoes,  her  neighbor  did  not 
import  $5,000  gowns  from  "Paree"  and  put  jeweled  col- 
lars on  her  pet  cur.  The  difference  in  the  condition  of  Dives 
and  Lazarus  is  more  sharply  defined  than  ever  before.  It 
is  not  so  much  the  pitiful  poverty  of  the  many  as  the1  enor- 
mous wealth  of  the  few  that  is  fostering  discontent.  Pride 
dallying  with  Sin  begot  Death;  willful  waste  is  breeding 
Anarchy  in  the  Womb  of  Want.  The  lords  and  ladies  of 
the  house  of  Have  revel  in  luxury  such  as  Lucullus  never 
knew,  while  within  sound  of  their  feasting  gaunt  children 
fight  like  famished  beasts  for  that  which  the  breakfast  gar- 
bage barrels  afford.  Private  fortunes  make  the  famed 
wealth  of  Lydia's  ancient  kings  appear  but  a  beggar's  patri- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  277 

mony,  while  brawny  giants  must  beg  or  steal  and  starving 
mothers  give  the  withered  breast  to  dying  babes. 

Labor  now  seeks  employment,  not  as  a  right,  but  as  a 
privilege.  It  has  come  to  such  a  pitiful  pass  in  this  "land 
of  liberty,"  this  "refuge  of  the  world's  oppressed,"  that 
to  afford  a  man  an  opportunity  to  employ  his  strength  or 
skill  in  the  creation  of  wealth,  a  portion  of  which  he  may 
retain  for  his  own  support,  is  regarded  rather  as  a  privi- 
lege than  a  free  contract  between  American  Sovereigns — 
an  act  of  charity,  for  which  the  recipient  should  be  duly 
grateful. 

No  man  can  be  a  freeman  while  dependent  upon  the 
good  will  of  another  for  his  bread  and  butter.  He  may  be 
a  Sovereign  dejure,  but  he's  a  Slave  de facto.  And  under 
present  conditions  the  more  labor-saving  machinery  he  in- 
vents, the  tighter  he  rivets  his  chains. 

We  had  hoped  and  believed  that  human  ingenuity  was 
about  to  lift  the  curse  laid  on  Adam  by  his  angry  Lord;  the 
angel  of  Intellect  to  reimparadise  the  poor  slave,  place  his 
fetters  on  nature's  tireless  forces  and  declare  that  never 
again  should  bread  be  eaten  in  the  sweat  of  the  brow;  but 
man  proposes — and  is  sued  for  breach  of  promise. 

Were  a  man  to  declare  labor-saving  machinery  and  the 
general  development  of  the  country  a  curse  to  the  poor,  he 
would  be  branded  as  a  "moss-back"  or  budding  candidate 
for  Bedlam;  yet  it  is  unquestionably  true  that  the  further 
the  average  individual  gets  from  the  so-called  blessings  of 
civilization — the  less  he  is  affected  by  our  boasted  indus- 
trial system — the  smaller  his  danger  of  starving  to  death. 

Many  of  us  can  remember  when  we  had  little  labor-sav- 
ing machinery  in  Texas;  when  railways  were  scarce  as 
consistent  Christians  at  a  colored  camp-meeting,  goods 
were  carried  from  the  coast  on  the  backs  of  burros  and  a 
full-dress  suit  consisted  chiefly  of  buckskin  breeches  and  a 
brace  of  angel  makers.  And  we  remember  also  that  a 
pauper  was  a  curiosity;  that  the  very  cowboys  played  poker 
at  $10  ante  with  the  sky  for  limit,  the  common  laborer 
carried  coin  in  his  belt  and  the  merchant  had  money  to 
burn.  Texas  has  developed  wonderfully  during  the  last 
few  decades.  We  now  have  improved  machinery — and  ex- 
tensive poor-farms;  railways — and  political  rings;  a  $3,000,- 
ooo  capitol — and  an  army  of  unemployed.  We  have  built 
fine  schools  and  finer  churches,  made  the  black  man  our 
political  brother  and  bought  his  vote.  We  have  exchanged 
our  buckskin  for  broadcloth,  our  hair-raising  profanity  for 
the  hypocrite's  whine,  straight  corn-juice  for  tilie  cham- 
pagne-jag and  the  hip-pocket  court  for  the  jackass  verdict 


278  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

of  the  petit  jury.  But  the  cowboy  now  plays  penny-ante 
on  credit  or  shoots  craps  for  small  coin;  the  common 
laborer  carries  in  his  belt  only  a  robust  appetite,  while  the 
merchant  who  dodges  bankruptcy  for  a  dozen  years  con- 
siders himself  the  special  favorite  of  fortune. 

And  what  is  true  of  Texas  is  true  in  greater  or  less  de- 
gree of  every  State  in  the  Union.  Development,  so  dear 
to  the  heart  of  the  patriotic  and  public-spirited  citizen,  has 
a  tendency  to  transform  an  independent  and  moderately 
prosperous  people  into  masters  and  slaves.  But  this  is  not 
the  fault  of  labor-saving  machinery,  nor  of  capital,  nor  of 
development  by  itself  considered.  The  more  wealth  labor 
creates,  the  more  it  should  enjoy.  When  the  reverse  is  the 
case  distribution  is  at  fault. 

The  substitution  of  expensive  machinery  for  hand-labor 
eliminated  the  independent  artisan.  His  productive  power 
was  multiplied;  but  his  independence — his  ability  to 
care  for  himself  without  the  co-operation  of  large  capital — 
was  gone.  The  wheelwright  could  not  return  to  his  shop 
nor  the  shoemaker  to  his  last  and  live  in  comfort.  Compe- 
tition with  the  iron  ringers  of  the  great  factory  were  im- 
possible. Labor  must  now  await  the  pleasure  of  capital — 
the  creature  has  become  lord  of  its  creator.  Tfhe  fierce 
competition  of  idle  armies  forces  wages  down,  and  slowly 
but  surely  the  workman  is  sinking  back  to  the  level  occu- 
pied before  the  cunning  brain  of  ;'genius  harnessed  the 
lightning  to  his  lathe  and  gave  him  nerves  of  steel  and 
muscles  of  brass  with  which  to  fight  his  battle  for  bread. 

With  the  improved  machinery  with  which  he  is  provided, 
the  American  workman  can  create  as  much  wealth  in  a 
week  as  he  need  consume  in  a  month;  but  he  goes  down 
on  his  knees  and  thanks  God  and  the  plutocracy  for  an 
opportunity  to  toil  300  days  in  the  year  for  a  bare  subsist- 
ence. 


Unfortunately,  I  have  no  catholicon  for  every  industrial 
ill — but  the  political  drug-stores  are  full  of  'em.  All  you've 
got  to  do  is  to  select  your  panacea,  pull  the  cork  and 
let  peace  and  plenty  overflow  a  grateful  land — so  we're 
told.  Instead  of  the  cure-me-quicks  prescribed  by  the 
economic  M.  D.'s,  I  believe  that  our  industrial  system  has 
been  doped  with  entirely  too  many  drugs.  I'd  throw 
physic  to  the  dogs,  exercise  a  little  common-sense  and 
give  nature  a  chance.  There's  an  old  story  of  an  Arkan- 
saw  doctor  who  invariably  threw  his  patients  into  fits  be- 
cause he  was  master  of  that  complaint;  but  the  economic 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  279 

M.  D.'s  can't  even  cure  fits.  When  they  attempt  it  the 
patient  goes  into  convulsions. 

Instead  of  going  to  so  much  trouble  to  bar  out  cheap 
goods  by  means  of  tariff  walls,  I'd  bar  out  cheap  men.  If 
you're  making  monkey-wrenches  at  $2  a  day  and  some  fel- 
low abroad  is  building  'em  for  50  cents,  your  boss  comes 
to  you  and  says: 

"Jim,  we've  got  to  have  a  tariff  to  keep  out  the  product 
of  pauper  labor  or  our  nether  garment's  ripped  from  nar- 
rative to  neck-band.  I  can't  pay  you  $2  and  compete  with 
an  employer  who  pays  but  50  cents." 

That  sounds  reasonable  and  you  swing  back  on  the  G. 
O.  P.  tow-line  and  lay  a  tariff-tax  on  monkey-wrenches 
that  looms  up  like  an  old-time  Democratic  majority  in 
Texas.  And  while  you  are  burning  ratification  tar-bar- 
rels and  trying  to  shake  hands  with  yourself  in  the  mirror 
at  the  Mechanic's  Exchange,  that  50  cent  fellow  crosses 
the  briny  and  robs  you  o>f  your  bench.  Your  old  employer 
is  protected  all  right,  but  where  do  you  come  in?  You 
don't  come  in;  you  simply  stand  out  in  the  industrial  nor- 
ther. You  count  the  railroad  ties  from  town  to  town  while 
your  wife  takes  in  washing,  your  daughter  goes  tol  work  in 
a  factory  at  two  dollars  a  week  and  your  son  grows  up  an 
ignorant  Arab  and  gets  into  ward  politics  or  the  peniten- 
tiary. You  can't  compete  with  tlie  importation,  because 
you've  been  bred  to  a  higher  standard  of  living.  You 
must  have  meat  three  times  a  day,  a  newspaper  at  break- 
fast and  a  new  book — or  the  Iconoclast — after  supper. 
You  must  have  your  plunge  bath  and  spring  bed,  your 
clean  shave  and  Sunday  shirt.  How:  can  you  hope  to  hold 
your  job  when  a  man  is  bidding  for  it  who  takes  up  his 
belly-band  for  breakfast,  dines  on  slumgullion  and  sucks 
his  breath  for  supper;  to  whom  literature  is  an  unknown 
luxury,  a  bath  a  deplorable  accident,  and  a  crummy  old 
blanket  a  -comfortable  bed  ?  You  can't  do  it,  and  if  you'll 
take  the  Apostle's  advice  you'll  quit  trying-. 

No;  I  wouldn't  prevent  the  immigration  of  worthy  Euro- 
peans— men  of  intelligence,  who  dignify  labor.  We  have 
millions  such  in  America,  and  they  are  most  estimable 
citizens.  Our  ancestors  were  all  Europeans,  and  that 
man  who  is  not  proud  of  his  parentage  should  have  been 
born  a  beast.  But  I'd  knock  higher  than  Gilderoy's  kite 
the  theory  that  America  should  forever  be  the  dumping- 
ground  for  foreign  filth — that  people  will  be  warmly  wel- 
comed here  -whom  no  other  country  wants  and  the  devil 
wouldn't  have. 

We  have  made  American  citizenship  entirely  too  cheap. 


280  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

We  permit  every  creature  that  can  poise  on  its  hind  legs 
and  call  itself  a  man,  to  sway  the  sceptre  of  American 
Sovereignty — to  become  an  important  factor  in  the  forma- 
tion of  our  public  polity;  and  then,  with  this  venal  vote  on 
the  one  hand,  eager  to  be  bought,  and  the  plutocrat  on  the 
other  anxious  to  buy,  we  wonder  why  it  is  that  the  invari- 
able tendency  of  our  laws  is  to  make  the  rich  man  a  prince 
and  the  poor  man  a  Populist — why  we  are  "great  only  in 
that  strange  spell,  a  name." 

In  this  work  of  reform  we've  got  to  begin  at  the  bottom 
— with  the  body  politic  itself.  You  can't  make  a  silk  purse 
of  a  sow's  ear,  nor  Sovereigns  of  men  who  were  born  to  be 
Slaves.  We've  got  to  grade  up  or  we're  gone.  Only  super- 
ior Intelligence  is  capable  of  self-government — 'Ignorance 
and  Tyranny  go  hand  in  hand.  You  may  theorize  until 
the  Bottomless  Pit  is  transformed  into  a  skating  park; 
you  may  vote  tariffs  high  or  low  and  money  hard  or  soft; 
you  may  inaugurate  the  Single-Tax  or  transform  the 
American  Republic  into  a  commune,  but  the  condition  of 
the  hewers  of  wood  and  the)  drawers  of  water  will  never  be 
permanently  bettered  while  Ignorance  and  Vice  have  ac- 
cess to  the  ballot-box. 

We  have  carried  the  enchanting  doctrine  of  "political 
equality"  entirely  too  far  and  are  paying  the  penalty. 
The  rebound  from  the  monstrous  doctrine  of  the  divine 
right  of  monarchs  has  hurried  us  into  equal  error.  Dis- 

f listed  with  the  rottenness  of  the  established  religion,  the 
'rench  people  once  crowned  a  courtesan  as  Goddess  of 
Reason;  maddened  by  the  insolence  of  'hereditary  official- 
ism, our  fathers  placed  the  rod  of  power  in  the  hoodlum's 
reckless  hand  and  bound  upon  the  stupid;  brow  of  hopeless 
nescience  Columbia's  imperial  crown.  That  the  greater 
must  guide  the  lesser  intelligence  is  nature's  immutable 
law.  To  deny  this  were  to  question  our  own  right  to  rule 
the  beast  and  God's  authority  to  reign  King  of  all  mankind. 
Self-preservation  will  yet  compel  us  to  guard  the  sacred 
privileges  of  American  sovereignty  as  jealously  as  did 
Rome  her  citizenship. 


Do  this,  and  all  other  needed  reforms  will  follow  as  surely 
and  as  swiftly  as  the  day-god  follows  the  dawn.  Knowl- 
edge is  power.  When  those  who  vote  fully  understand 
that  every  dollar  expended  by  government,  federal,  state 
or  municipal,  must  be  created  by  the  common  people— that 
first  or  last,  labor  must  furnish  it  forth — 'we'll  cease  having 
billion-dollar  Congresses.  We'll  cease  paying  a  hundred 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  281 

and  forty  millions  per  annum  in  federal  pensions;  we'll 
cease  wasting  a  King's  ransom  annually  in  pretending  to 
"improve"  intermittent  creeks  and  impossible  harbors 
solely  for  political  navigation;  we'll  cease  borrowing 
money  in  time  of  peace  to  bolster  up  that  foolish  financial 
fetich  known  as  the  "gold-reserve;"  we'll  cease  making  so 
many  needless  laws  and  paying  aspiring  patriots  fat  sal- 
aries to  harass  us  with  their  enforcement;  we'll  cease  ex- 
empting from  taxation  the  half-million  dollar  church  and 
laying  a  heavier  mulct  on  the  mechanic's  cottage  and  the 
widow's  cow;  we'll  cease  paying  preachers  five  dollars  a 
minute  to  stand  up  in  our  legislative  halls  and  insult  Al- 
might  God  with  perfunctory  prayers;  we'll  cease  build- 
ing so  many  palatial  prisons  where  thieves  and  thugs  ma)' 
be  cared  for  at  the  expense  of  honest  people,  but  will 
divide  criminals  into  two  classes — those  who  slhould  be  per- 
emptorily hanged,  and  those  who  should  be  whipped  and 
turned  loose  to  hustle  their  own  hash.  Nothing  knocks 
the  sawdust  out  of  false  sentiment  so  quickly  as  the  reali- 
zation that  it's  an  expensive  luxury  and  that  we  must  pay 
the  freight. 

Billion-dollar  Congresses,  eh?  Do  you  know  what  that 
means?  There  are  less  than  fifteen  million  wealth  creators 
in  this  country,  and  the  last  farthing"  of  it  comes  out  of 
their  pockets — something  over  $66  apiece!  If  you  had  it 
in  silver  dollars — and  I  suppose  that  most  of  you  would 
accept  silver — you  couldn't  count  it  in  a  century.  Lay  the 
coins  edge  to  edge  and  they'll  belt  the  world.  Pile  them 
on  top  of  each  other  and  you'll  have  a  silver  shaft  more 
than  1750  miles  high.  Sand  your  hands  and  climb  it. 
Perchance  from  the  top  you'll  see  many  things — among 
others  what  is  oppressing  the  poor.  And  while  up  in  that 
rarified  atmosphere,  where  the  vision  is  good  and  thinking 
probably  easy,  you  will  look  around  for  those  other 
pyramids  of  expense  annually  erected  by  state,  county  and 
municipal  government,  then  come  down  firm  in  tihe  faith 
that  if  this  isn't  a  great  government  it  ought  to  be,  consider- 
ing what  it  costs.  No  wonder  the  workman  carries  in  his 
pocket  only  an  elegant  assortment  of  holes! 

We're  governed  entirely  too  much — Officialism  is  becom- 
ing a  veritable  Old  Man  of  the  Sea  on  the  neck  of  Labor's 
Sinbad.  About  every  fifth  man  you  meet  is  a  public  ser- 
vant of  some  sort,  and  you  cannot  get  married  or  buried, 
purchase  a  drink  or  own  a  dog  except  with  a  by-your-leave 
to  the  all-pervading  law  of  the  land.  In  some  states  sui- 
cide itself  is  an  infraction  of  the  criminal  code,  and  if  the 
police  don't  cut  you  down  in  time  to  put  you  in  jail  the 


282  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

preachers  will  send  you  to  hell.  Every  criminal  law  this 
state  and  county  and  city  needs  can  be  printed  in  a  book 
no  larger  than  the  Iconoclast,  and  that  so  plain  that  he 
who  runs  may  read  and  reading  understand.  And  when 
so  printed  and  so  understood,  without  the  possibility  of 
misconstruction,  they  could  be  enforced  at  one-fifth  the 
cost  of  the  present  judicial  failure.  We  have  so  many 
laws  and  so  much  legal  machinery  that  when  you  throw:  a 
man  into  the  judicial  hopper  not  even  an  astrologer  can 
tell  whether  he'll  come  out  a  horse-thief  or  only  a  homi- 
cide— or  whether  the  people  will  weary  of  waiting  on  the 
circumlocution  office  and  take  a  change  of  venue  to  Judge 
Lynch. 

This  can  never  be  a  land  of  religious  liberty — the  atheist 
can  never  be  considered  as  on  a  political  parity  with  his 
ultra-orthodox  brother — until  w,e  compel  church  property 
to  bear  its  pro  rata  of  the  public  burdens. 

And  right  here  let  me  say  a  word  about  the  "Apostle." 
I  have  been  accused  by  people — for  whom  no  cherry-tree 
blooms  or  little  hatchet  is  ground — of  being  a  rank  atheist 
and  a  red-flag  anarchist.  It  has  been  broadly  intimated 
that  I'm  trying  to  rip  the  Christian  religion  up  by  the 
roots,  rob  trusting  hearts  of  their  hope  and  deprive  the 
preacher  of  his  daily  bread.  Now  I  might  just  as  well 
confess  to  you  that  I'm  no  angel.  If  I  were  I'd  fly  out  of 
Texas  till  the  bifurcated  Democratic  party  has  another 
"harmony"  deal.  When  you  hear  people  denouncing  me 
as  an  atheist,  just  retire  to  your  closet  and  pray,  "Father 
forgive  them,  for  they  know  not  what  they  do."  And  you 
might  add,  that  nobody  cares.  No  mortal  son  of  Adam's 
misery  can  produce  one  line  I  ever  wrote,  or  quote  one 
sentence  I  ever  uttered,  disrespectful  of  any  religion — and 
that's  more  than  you  can  say  of  most  of  the  ministers. 

But  it  is  not  right,  it  is  not  just  that  the  little  holdings 
of  the  poor  should  be  relentlessly  taxed  and  costly  tem- 
ples exempted — palatial  edifices  in  which  polite  society 
pretends  to  worship  One  who  broke  bread  with  beggars 
and  slept  in  the  brush.  Such  an  arrangement  signifies 
neither  good  religion  nor  good  sense.  It's  the  result  of 
sanctified  selfishness.  I  believe  in  taxing  luxuries,  and  a 
costly  church  is  not  a  necessity.  At  least  Christ  did  not 
think  so,  for  he  never  built  one. 

Congregations  that  can  afford  to  erect  fine  churches  and 
export  saving  grace  to  the  pagans  of  foreign  climes,  can 
afford  to  pay  taxes  and  thereby  help  American  heathen 
put  of  the  hole.  A  million  men  out  of  employment,  pac- 
ing our  streets  in  grim  despair;  a  million  children  coming 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  283 

up  in  ignorance  and  crime;  a  million  women  hesitating 
between  the  wolf  of  want  and  the  abundance  of  infamy, 
and  the  church — supposed  to  be  God's  ministering  angel — 
crying,  ''Give,  give!  If  you  can't  give  much,  give  little. 
Remember  the  widow's  mite" — so  acceptable  to  a  pauper 
deity. 

Give  for  what?  To  build  fine  temples  in  whose  sacred 
shadows  will  lurk  the  gaunt  spectre  of  Famine  and  the 
grisly  gorgon  of  Crime.  To  buy  grand  organs  and  costly 
bells  to  peal  praises  to  One  who  had  nowhere  to  lay  his 
head.  To  pay  stall-fed  preachers  five,  ten,  twenty  thousand 
dollars  a  year  to  expound  the  doctrine  of  a  poor  carpen- 
ter who  couldn't  have  kept  a  silver  dollar  in  his  jeans  a 
single  day  while  there  was  poverty  and  suffering  in  the 
world. 

While  the  wealth-producer  is  robbed  to  pension  million- 
aires who  suffered  mental  anguish  because  of  the  draft,  and 
to  administer  worse  than  useless  laws,  still  the  amount  so 
unnecessarily  abstracted  would  be  but  a  mere  bagatelle  if 
labor  was  steadily  employed  and  reaped  its  just  reward. 
With  the  mighty  energies  of  this  nation  in  full  play  and 
the  wealth  remaining  with  its  producers,  we  could  give 
even  all  the  candidates  an  office,  with  plenty  to  get  and 
little  to  do,  and  still  have  pie  in  the  pantry  and  corn  in  the 
crib.  There  is  something  more  the  matter  than  govern- 
mental waste — there's  something  radically  wrong. 


In  tracing  the  causes  of  panics  and  periods  of  business 
depression,  we  invariably  find  our  currency  more  or  less  at 
fault.  Now  don't  get  frightened.  I'm  not  going  to  dose 
you 'with  free  silver  nor  give  you  the  gold  cure.  This  is 
neither  Coin's  Financial  School  nor  a  gold-bug  incubator. 
The  currency  question  is  one  you  know  all  about.  Every- 
body does — especially  the  corner-grocery  politician.  He 
understands  it  from  A  to  Izzard — knows  almost  as  much 
about  it  as  a  hello-girl  does  of  the  nature  of  electricity. 
Prof.  Jevon  truly  says  that  "a  kind  of  intellectual  vertigo 
appears  to  sieze  people  when  they  talk  of  money."  Per- 
haps the  Goddess  of  Liberty  on  the  silver  dollar  has  'em 
Trilbyized. 

We  hear  a  great  deal  of  late  about  the  "science  of 
money."  It's  supposed  to  'be  something  very  esoteric — 
something  that  a  fellow  can  only  master  by  drawing  heav- 
ily on  his  gray  matter,  by  working  his  think-machine  up 
to  the  limit  and  sweating  blood.  Now  let  me  tell  you  that 
there  is  no  "science  of  money,"  any  more  than  there's  a 


284  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

science  of  harvesting  hoop-poles  or  fighting  flies.  When  a 
man  begins  to  give  you  an  interminable  song  and  dance 
about  the  science  of  money,  just  you  send  for  the  police 
and  have  him  locked  up  as  a  dangerous  lunatic. 

Here's  a  ticket  good  for  so  many  meals  at  a  restaurant 
— an  order  for  so  much  wealth ;  and  here's  a  silver  dollar — 
no  'tisn't;  it's  a  check  on  a-er  on  a  "resort;"  in  fact,  on  a 
saloon;  an  I.  O.  U.  for  12  1-2  cents,  the  price  of  a  cigar — 
or  something — I  suppose.  "Man  should  not  live  by  bread 
alone."  Now  what's  the  difference  between  this  ticket 
and  check  and  the  currency  issued  by  the  government? 
Simply  this :  These  are  the  I.  O.  U.'s  of  individual's  money, 
the  I.  O.  U.'s  of  the  entire  American  people.  These  are 
orders  for  certain  kinds  of  wealth  at  particular  places; 
money  is  an  order  for  all  kinds  of  wealth  at  any  place 
within  the  jurisdiction  of  the  federal  government.  This 
ticket  is  the  check  of  one  American,  drawn  against  his 
personal  wealth  and  credit;  this  bill  is  the  check  of  all 
Americans,  drawn  against  the  collective  wealth  and  credit 
of  the  nation.  That's  all  the  difference  between  a  cock- 
tail check  and  a  coin,  'between  a  meal  ticket  and  a  ten 
dollar  bill.  Neither  is  worth  a  rap  unless  it  can  be 
redeemed.  Like  sanctification  caught  at  a  camp-meeting, 
there  must  be  a  hereafter  to  it  or  it's  a  humbug.  But  don't 
you  metallists  take  that  as  a  premise  and  jump  at  conclu- 
sions or  you're  liable  to  sprain  your  logical  sequence.  What 
kind  of  redemption  did  I  have  in  view  when  I  acquired  this 
clie — I  mean  this  ticket?  I  expected  that  it  would  be  re- 
deemed in  something  that  would  expand  my  surcingle  and 
enable  me  to  cast  a  shadow — in  eggs  and  oleomargarine, 
corn-bread  and  buttermilk.  And  if  so  redeemed  on  demand, 
is  it  not  a  good  ticket — is  it  not  worth  its  face?  What  kind 
of  redemption  did  I  expect  when  I  acquired  this  bill?  I 
expected  it  to  be  redeemed  in  the  necessaries  of  life — or 
possibly  the  luxuries.  Who  issued  it?  The  government. 
Who's  the  government?  The  people.  And  when  the  peo- 
ple have  given  me  bread  and  butter,  tobacco  and  transporta- 
tion, clothing  and  cocktails,  and  afforded  me  police  protec- 
tion to  the  extent  of  my  ten  dollars  hasn't  it  been  redeemed 
in  the  manner  I  anticipated — in  the  only  way  in  which 
money  can  be  redeemed  ?  If  I  exchange  this  bill  for  a  gold 
eagle  what  have  I  got?  Another  governmental  drink- 
check  or  meal-ticket  that  awaits  redemption.  And  there 
you  have  the  whole  "science  of  money,"  over  which  poli- 
ticians have  so  long  puzzled  their  brains  that  their  think- 
tanks  have  got  full  of  logical  wiggletails.  A  dollar,  whether 
it  be  made  of  gold,  silver  or  paper,  is  simply  an  order  which 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST.  285 

the  people  in  their  official  capacity  give  against  all  the 
wealth,  actual  and  potential,  of  the  nation;  and  unless  the 
holder  can  get  it  promptly  redeemed  in  food  and  clothing, 
he's  in  a  terribly  bad  fix. 


Every  few  years  our  industrial  system  gets  the  jim-jams. 
Capital  flies  to  cover,  factories  close  and  labor  goes  tramp- 
ing across  the  country  seeking  honest  employment  and  re- 
ceiving a  warm  welcome — from  militia  companies  with 
shotted  guns.  Cheerful  idiots  begin  to  prattle  of  "over- 
production," the  economic  M.  D.'s  to  refurbish  all  the  old 
remedies,  from  conjure-bags  to  communism.  They  all 
know  exactly  what  caused  the  "crisis"  and  what  to  do  for 
it ;  but  despite  the  doctors  the  patient  usually — survives. 
And  the  M.  D.  who  succeeds  in  cramming  his  pet  panacea 
down  its  throat  claims  all  the  credit  for  the  recovery.  We 
are  slowly  emerging  from  the  crash  of  '93,  and  the  cuckoos 
are  cock-sure  that  Cleveland  hoodooed  with  that  financial 
rabbit-foot  known  as  the  gold-reserve — that  a  country 
fairly  bursting  with  wealth  was  saved  from  the  demnition 
bowwows  by  the  blessed  expedient  of  going  into  debt ;  that 
labor  found  salvation  by  shouldering  an  added  burden  in 
the  shape  of  interest-bearing  bonds.  Hereafter  when  a 
burro  tries  to  lie  down  beneath  a  load  that's  making  him 
bench-legged,  we'll  just  pile  a  brick  house  or  two  on  top  of 
him,  and,  with  ears  and  tail  erect,  he'll  strike  a  Nancy 
Hanks  gait  and  come  cavorting  down  the  home  stretch. 
When  a  statesman  can  see  such  things  as  that  while  wide 
awake  and  perfectly  sober,  he  ought  to  consult  a  doctor. 
No  wonder  the  Democratic  party  split  wide  open — trans- 
formed from  an  ascendent  sun  into  a  bifurcated  Biela's 
comet,  wandering  the  Lord  knows  whither. 

The  gold  reserve,  we  are  told,  is  to  "protect  the  credit  of 
our  currency."  Protect  it  from  whom?  You  and  I  are 
making  no  assault  upon  it — wouldn't  hurt  it  for  the  world. 
When  we  get  a  paper  or  silver  dollar  we  don't  trot  around 
to  the  treasury  to  have  it  "redeemed"  in  a  slug  of  yellow 
metal — we  make  a  bee  line  for  the  grocery  store  and  have 
it  redeemed  in  a  side  o'  bacon.  Who  is  it  that  chisels  deso- 
lation into  the  blessed  gold  reserve — the  so-called  "bul- 
warks of  our  currency  ?"  The  fellows  who  want  bonds — the 
capitalistic,  the  creditor  class;  the  men  who  own  the 
mortgages  and  have  millions  of  dollars  corded  up  in 
bank — the  men  who  have  most  to  lose  by  any  bobble  in  the 
credit  of  our  currency.  And  every  time  the  capitalist 


286  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

tries  to  hoist  himself  with  his  own  petard,  the  administra- 
tion smothers  the  blaze  with  a  block  of  interest-bearing 
bonds.  If  he  wants  to  make  a  sky-rocket  of  himself,  let 
him  kerosense  his  coat-tails  and  apply  the  match.  If  the 
gold  reserve  were  really  necessary  to  the  credit  of  our  cur- 
rency, capitalists  would  no  more  make  war  upon  it  than 
they  would  bestride  a  buzz-saw  making-  a  million  revolu- 
tions a  minute.  Instead  of  systematically  draining  it  they 
would,  whenever  It  struck  "the  danger-line,"  gather  all 
the  gold  they  could  get  and  send  it  on  to  Washington. 
The  capitalists  are  not  crazy;  they've  simply  got  a  soft 
snap  in  that  "bulwark"  business  and  are  working  it  for  all 
it's  worth. 

Calico  is  sold  by  the  yard,  kerosene  by  the  gallon,  coffee 
by  the  pound.  These  measures  are  immutable,  and  those 
who  buy  and  sell  by  them  make  their  contract  in  perfect 
confidence.  But  suppose  they  altered  from  day  to  day  or 
from  year  to  year, — the  yard  ranging  from  25  to  50  inches, 
the  pound  from  10  to  20  ounces;  would  our  exchanges  be 
effected  without  much  friction,  think  you?  Would  not 
such  a  ridiculous  system  of  weights  and  measures  para- 
lyze exchange  and  demoralize  industry?  Would  not  those 
who  could  juggle  the  system  to  suit  themselves — buying 
by  a  long  and  selling  by  a  short  yard — accumulate  colossal 
fortunes  at  the  expense  of  the  common  people?  Would 
we  not  have  "panics"  in  plenty  and  "depressions"  galore? 
Well,  that  is  exactly  what  is  happening  to  the  dollar,  our 
measure  of  value,  the  most  important  of  all  our  trade  tools. 
And  mark  you,  a  change  in  the  purchasing  power  of  the 
dollar  is  equivalent  to  an  alteration  of  every  weight  and 
measure  employed  by  commerce.  Understand?  When 
the  purchasing  power  of  the  dollar  expands  or  contracts  it 
has  the  same  effect  on  exchange  as  would  the  expansion 
or  contraction  of  the  yard,  the  gallon  and  the  pound. 

A  shifting  measure  of  value  is  the  nigger  in  our  indus- 
trial woodpile.  We  have  got  to  have  a  measure  of  value 
that's  as  immutable  as  our  measure  of  quantity;  a  dollar 
as  reliable  as  an  official  pound;  a  dollar  that's  the  same 
yesterday,  and  to-day  and  forever,  before  we  see  the  last 
of  these  panics  and  periods  of  business  depression.  We 
have  got  to  have  a  currency  that  will  adapt  itself  auto- 
matically and  infallibly  to  the  requirements  of  commerce — 
that  will  constitute  an  ever-effective  exchange  medium — be- 
fore we  can  obtain  a  smooth-working  industrial  machine 
and  the  maximum  employment  of  labor. 

We  know  frfom  experience  that  gold  will  not  supply  us 
with  such  a  currency,  that  silver  will  not  do  it,  that  bimet- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  287 

allism  will  not  do  it — that  greenbackism,  as  we  understand 
the  term,  will  not  come  within  a  mile  of  it.  Then  what 
will  do  it?  That's  the  problem.  Solve  it,  and  you  forever 
'put  an  end  to  commercial  panics  in  a  land  of  plenty;  you 
deprive  capital  of  its  power  to  oppress  labor;  you  assure 
industry  a  constant  friend  where  it  has  so  often  found  an 
insidious  foe.  Solve  it  and  Columbia  can  furnish  happy 
homes  for  half  the  world — homes  unhaunted  by  the  wolf 
of  want,  but  crowned  with  sweet  content  and  gilded  with 
freedom's  glory. 

For  a  century  economists  have  been  seeking  the  solution 
of  this  all-important  problem.  Even  conservative  old 
Adam  Smith  dreamed  of  the  emancipation  of  the  world 
from  the  multifarious  ills  of  metallic  money ;  but  we  still 
cling  with  slavish  servility  to  the  silver  of  Abraham  and 
the  gold  of  Solomon. 


I  do  not  claim  to  have  found  the  philosopher's  stone,  for 
which  so  many  wiser  men  have  sought  in  vain;  but  the 
currency  plan  I  proposed  in  1891 — and  which  was  again 
outlined  in  the  Iconoclast  for  May  of  this  year — has  been 
carefully  examined  by  the  ablest  financiers  of  Europe  and 
America,  and  they  have  been  unable  to  point  out  a  funda- 
mental fault.  It  is  known  as  the  interconvertible  bond-cur- 
rency plan,  by  which  our  circulating  media  would  be  bot- 
tomed on  the  entire  wealth  of  the  nation  instead  of  upon 
fragments  of  metal  of  fluctuating  value ;  by  which  the  vol- 
ume of  the  currency  would  depend,  not  upon  the  fecundity 
of  the  mines,  the  fiat  of  Congress  or  the  greed  of  Wall 
street,  but  upon  the  needs  of  commerce  itself.  By  this  plan 
the  proportion  between  the  money-work  to  be  done  and  the 
money  available  to  do  it  is  always  the  same;  hence  it 
would  afford  an  immutable  measure  of  value.  In  studying 
the  plan  it  is  well  to  bear  in  mind  that  our  foreign  trade 
— that  bogy-man  of  the  metallists — has  no  more  to  do 
with  our  currency  than  with  our  pint  cups  and  bushel- 
baskets — no  more  than  with  our  language  and  religion ; 
that  we  can  pay  our  foreign  debts  and  collect  our  foreign 
credits  only  in  commodities;  that  the  prattle  indulged  in 
by  the  metallists  anent  "money  that  is  good  the  world 
oVer'  is  mere  goose-speech — that  there  is  no  such  money. 
We  buy  and  sell  with  England  and  France  to  the  extent 
of  tens  of  millions  annually ;  yet  I  haven't  seen  a  British 
guinea  or  a  French  franc  in  fifteen  years.  And  if  you 
had  a  foreign  coin  and  should  go  around  to  a  resort,  and 
call  for  a  glass  of — er — of  buttermilk,  and  plank  the  fittle 


288  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

stranger  down  on  the  counter,  the  party  in  the  white  apron 
and  Alaska  dazzler  would  say: 

"Wot  yer  givin'  us?" 

You'd  reply :  "I'm  giving  you  gold — money  good  the 
world  over." 

"  Wot  is  it — watch  charm?     Dis  ain't  no  pawn  shop." 

"But  that's  money." 

"Eh?" 

"Money — gold  coin  that  maketh  the  heart  glad." 

"Wot  kind  o'  money?" 

"It's  a  British  guinea." 

"Well,  why  don't  you  go  to  Great  Britain  to  blow  your- 
self?" 

"But  my  dear  sir,  this  is  money  of  final  payment.  This 
is  value  itself.  This  does  not  depend  on  the  stamp  of  gov- 
ernment, but  circulates  throughout  the  world  on  its  intrinsic 
merit." 

"Well,  it  don't  circulate  in  this  joint.     See? 

Slam  your  theories  up  against  conditions  before  you  tie 
to  them. 


You  all  know  that  in  this  country  there  should  be  no 
such  thing  as  able-bodied  pauperism.  You  know  that  un- 
til the  last  arable  acre  is  brought  to  the  highest  possible 
cultivation,  every  mine  developed,  every  forest  made  to 
contribute  to  the  creature  comforts  of  man,  there  should  be 
remunerative  work  for  all.  You  know  that,  with  the  aid 
of  wealth-creating  machinery  every  laborer  should  be  able 
to  acquire  a  competence  to  comfort  his  declining  days. 
You  know  that  until  Need  is  satisfied  and  Greed  is  gorged 
there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  overproduction — that  under 
normal  conditions  when  there's  a  plethora  of  necessaries, 
the  surplus  energy  of  the  nation  turns  to  the  creation  of 
luxuries  and  the  standard  of  living  advances.  You  know 
that  with  such  wonderful  resources,  touched  by  the  magic 
wand  of  genius,  the  golden  age  of  which  poets  have  dream- 
ed and  for  which  philanthropists  have  prayed,  should  be  even 
at  our  doors. 

I  hope  to  contribute  in  some  slight  degree  to  the  estab- 
lishment of  conditions  that  will  enable  us  to  utilize  to  the 
utmost  the  free  gifts  of  a  gracious  God ;  to  the  proper  dis- 
tribution of  wealth;  to  the  emancipation  of  labor,  not  by 
the  law  of  blind  force,  but  enlightened  self-interest — not 
by  riotous  revolution,  but  peaceful  evolution.  I  want  to 
see  every  American  Citizen  in  very  truth  a  Sovereign,  to 
whom  life  is  a  joy  instead  of  a  curse.  I  want  to  see  every 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

rag  transformed  into  a  royal  robe,  every  hovel  into  a  cul- 
tured home.  I  want  to  hasten,  if  by  ever  so  little,  the  day 
when  we  can  boast  with  the  proud  sons  of  imperial  Rome, 
that  to  be  an  American  is  greater  than  to  be  a  king. 

And  when  we  so  amend  industrial  conditions  that  each 
can  find  employment  at  profitable  prices,  we  do  more  to 
eliminate  crime  and  foster  morality  than  have  all  the 
prophets  and  preachers,  from  Melchizedeck  the  mythical  to 
Talmage  the  turgid. 

No  man  can  be  either  a  patriot  or  a  consistent  Christian 
on  an  empty  stomach — he's  merely  a  savage  animal,  a 
dangerous  beast.  You  must  get  a  square  meal  inside  of  a 
man  and  a  clean  shirt  outside  of  him  before  he's  fit  sub- 
ject for  saving  grace.  You  must  give  him  a  bath  before 
he's  worth  baptizing.  And  when  you  get  him  clean  and 
well  clothed,  fed  and  housed  as  a  reward  of  his  own  honest 
industry,  he's  not  far  from  the  Kingdom  of  God.  But 
if  you  wrant  to  degrade  a  people  beyond  redemption ;  if  you* 
want  to  transform  them  into  contemptible  peons  and 
whining  hypocrites  who  encumber  the  earth  like  so  much 
unclean  vermin,  educate  them  to  feed  on  the  crumbs  from 
Dives*  banquet-board  and  accept  his  cast-off  clothing  with 
obsequious  thankfulness. 

The  concentration  of  wealth  in  the  hands  of  the  few  and 
the  impoverishment  of  the  common  people  until  it  was  the 
bread  of  charity  or  the  blood  of  the  revolution,  has  ever 
been  the  herald  of  moral  decay  and  of  national  death.  So 
passed  the  glory  of  Greece  and  the  grandeur  of  Rome, 
and,  if  we  may  judge  the  future  by  the  past,  so  will  perish 
the  greatest  republic  that  ever  gleamed  like  a  priceless 
jewel  on  the  skeleton  hand  of  Time.  Self-interest,  human- 
ity, patriotism,  religion  itself,  admonish  us  to  weigh  well 
the  problem  of  the  hour — a  problem  born  of  human  prog- 
ress, forced  upon  us  by  the  mighty  revolution  wrought  in 
the  industrial  world  by  the  giant  Steam — and  that  prob- 
lem is:  Shall  the  average  American  Citizen  be  a  Slave  or 
a  Sovereign? 

Don't  imagine  for  a  moment  that  I'm  an  anarchist — 
that  I'm  going  to  wind  up  this  seance  by  unfurling  the 
red  flag  and  throwing  a  hat-full  of  bombs.  I  admit  that  I 
haven't  much  respect  for  law — there's  so  much  of  it  that 
when  I  come  to  spread  my  respect  over  the  entire  lot  it's 
about  as  thin  as  one  of  Sam  Jones'  sermons.  Still,  I  don't 
believe  in  strikes,  and  riots  and  bloodshed.  I'm  for  peace 
— peace  in  its  most  virulent  form.  I've  had  a  sneaking 
respect  for  Cleveland  ever  since  he  employed  a  substitute 
to  put  a  kibosh  on  the  Southern  Confederacy  while  he  re- 


200  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

mained  at  home  to  play  pinocle  with  the  pretty  girls.  He 
may  not  be  much  of  a  statesman  in  time  of  peace,  but 
there's  no  picnic  ants  on  his  judgment  in  time  of  war. 

It  is  time  that  capital  and  labor  realized  that  their  in- 
terests are  really  commutual,  as  interdependent  as  the 
brain  and  the  body ;  time  they  ceased  their  fratricidal  strife 
and,  uniting  their  mighty  forces  under  the  flag  of  Prog- 
ress, completed  the  conquest  of  the  world  and  doomed 
Poverty,  Ignorance  and  Vice — hell's  great  triumvirate — to 
banishment  eternal.  Unless  labor  is  employed,  capital 
cannot  increase — it  can  'only  concentrate.  Unless  prop- 
erty rights  are  held  inviolable  and  capital  thereby  encour- 
aged to  high  enterprise,  labor  is  left  without  a  lever  with 
which  to  lift  itself  to  perfect  life  and  must  sink  back  to 
barbarism. 

It  is  time  that  American  citizens  of  alleged  intelligence 
ceased  trailing  blindly  in  the  wake  of  partisan  band- 
wagons and  began  to  seriously  consider  the  public  welfare 
— time  they  realized  that  the  people  were  not  made  for 
parties,  but  parties  for  the  people,  and  refuse  to  sacrifice 
their  patriotism  on  the  unclean  altar  of  partisan  slavery. 
Blind  obedience  to  party  fiat;  the  division  of  the  people 
of  one  great  political  family  into  hostile  camps ;  subjec- 
tion of  the  public  interest  to  partisan  advantage;  placing 
the  badge  of  party  servitude  above  the  crown  of  American 
sovereignty — the  ridiculous  oriflamme  of  foolish  division 
above  Old  Glory's  star-gemmed  promise  of  everlasting 
unity — have  brought  the  first  nation  of  all  the  world  to  the 
very  brink  of  destruction. 


It  is  difficult  for  people  here  in  Texas  to  understand  the 
industrial  condition  of  the  American  nation  to-day ;  to  ap- 
preciate the  dangers  upon  which  it  is  drifting.  We  are 
too  apt  to  imagine  everybody  as  prosperous  and  conserva- 
tive as  ourselves ;  or  if  not  so,  it's  because  they  do  not  vote 
the  Democratic  ticket — that  panacea  for  all  the  ills  that 
flesh  is  heir  to.  Here  in  Texas  we  have  hung  our  second 
providence  on  the  Democratic  party — it  has  become  a  re- 
ligion with  us.  If  a  man,  is  orthodox  in  his  political  faith 
all  things  are  forgiven  him;  but  if  there's  any  doubt  about 
his  Democracy  we  are  inclined  to  regard  him  as  an  alien, 
if  not  an  anarchist.  Most  of  us  enjoy  the  shadow  of  our 
own  vine  and  fig  tree — which  it  is  impossible  to  mortgage. 
We  feed  three  times  a  day,  have  a  cocktail  every  morning, 
a  clean  shirt  occasionally,  and  even  when  cotton  goes  so 
low  it  doesn't  pay  for  the  pans-green  to  poison  the  worms, 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  291 

we  blame  it  on  the  Lord  instead  of  on  our  political  leaders. 
But  it's  different  in  other  sections  of  the  Union. 

America  contains  more  than  a  million  as  desperate  men 
as  ever  danced  the  Carmagnole  or  shrieked  with  brutal 
joy  when  the  blood  of  French  aristocrats  reddened  the 
guillotine.  The  dark  alleys  and  unclean  dives  of  our  great 
cities  are  crowded  with  dangerous  sans-cullotte,  and  our 
highways  with  hungry  men  eager  for  bread — though  the 
world  blaze  for  it.  Pauperism  is  rampant,  the  criminal 
classes  increasing  and  everywhere  the  serpent  of  Socialism 
is  leaving  it's  empoisoned  slime.  Suppose  that  these  des- 
perate elements  find  a  determined  leader — a  modern 
Marat,  who  will  make  the  most  of  his  opportunities  for 
evil:  how  many  of  that  vast  contingent  now  clinging 
with  feeble  grasp  to  the  rotten  skirts  of  a  doubtful  respecta- 
bility, would  be  swept  into  the  seething  vortex  of  un- 
bridled villainy?  Note  the  failure  of  public  officials  to  pro- 
tect corporate  property ;  the  necessity  of  calling  for  federal 
bayonets  and  batteries  to  suppress  labor  riots ;  the  dan- 
gerous unrest  of  the  common  people ;  the  sympathy  of  the 
farmer — that  Atlas  upon  whose  broad  shoulders  rests  our 
political  and  industrial  world — with  every  quasi-military 
organization  that  throws  down  the  gage  of  battle  to 
the  powers  that  be,  then  tell  me,  if  you  can,  where  Dives 
may  look  for  defenders  should  the  rabble  rise  in  its  wrath, 
the  bullet  supplant  the  ballot  in  the  irrepressible  conflict 
between  the  Cormorant  and  the  Commune !  And  what  are 
we  doing  to  avert  the  danger?  Distributing  a  little  dole 
and  preaching  patience  to  starving  people;  quarreling 
about  the  advisability  of  "counting  a  quorum"  or  coining 
a  little  silver  seigniorage ;  "wrangling  over  the  "  :ghts"  of 
a  mid-Pacific  prostitute  to  rule  Celts  and  Saxons,  and  try- 
ing to  so  "reform"  the  tariff  that  it  will  yield  more  revenue 
with  less  taxation !  We  are  bowing  down  before  various 
pie-hunting  political  gods  and  electing  men  to  Congress 
who  couldn't  tell  the  Federal  Constitution  from  Calvin's 
Confession  of  Faith.  We  are  sending  street-corner  econ- 
omists to  state  and  national  conventions  to  evolve 
from  their  innate  ignorance  and  gild  with  their  supernal 
gall  political  platforms  which  we  are  pledged  beforehand  to 
accept  as  the  essence  of  all  worldly  wisdom.  Our  pa- 
triotism has  been  supplanted  by  partisanship,  and  now  all 
are  for  a  party  and  none  are  for  the  state.  On  July  4  we 
shout  for  the  old  flag  and  all  the  rest  of  the  year  we  clamor 
for  an  appropriation.  The  man  who  is  kicked  by  a  night- 
mare while  dreaming  of  the  draft  demands  a  pension  and 
every  burning  patriot  wants  an  office.  And  while  our 


292  BRANN,  TH'E  ICONOCLAST 

ship  of  state  is  threading  "with  unsteady  course  the  stormy 
straits  between  the  Scylla  of  Greed  and  the  Charybdis  of 
Need;  its  canvas  torn  by  contending  winds;  its  decks 
swept  by  angry  waves,  we  boast  of  the  strength  of  our 
"free  institutions" — as  tho'  Republics  had  never  fallen  nor 
revolutions  erased  from  the  map  of  the  world  proud  Em- 
pires that  imagined  themselves  immortal. 

But  before  God  I  do  believe  this  selfish  and  unpatriotic 
age  will  pass,  as  passed  the  age  of  brutish  ignorance,  as 
passed  the  age  of  tyranny.  I  believe  the  clay  will  come — oh 
blessed  dawn ! — when  the  angel  of  Intellect  will  banish 
the  devil  of  Demagogy;  when  Americans  will  be  in  spirit 
and  in  truth  a  band  of  brothers,  the  wrongs  of  one  the 
concern  of  all ;  when  labor  will  no  longer  fear  the  Cormor- 
ant nor  capital  the  Commune — when  all  men  \vill  be  equal 
before  the  law  wherever  falls  the  shadow  of  our  flag. 


MARLBOROUGH-VANDERBILT  MARRIAGE. 

The  approaching  marriage  of  Miss  Consuelo  Vanderbilt 
to  the  Duke  of  Marlborough  is  agitating  the  social  world 
from  centre  to  circumference.  New  York's  Four  Hun1 
dred  and  the  fashionables  of  London  are  standing  on  their 
hind  legs  and  wildly  waving  their  ears.  The  alliance  is 
pronounced  not  only  "the  social  event  of  the  season,"  but 
of  all  seasons,  so  far  as  Columbia  is  concerned.  The  cap- 
ture by  Miss  Gould  of  a  French  count  was  not  a  circum- 
stance to  it.  The  Frenchman  was  only  a  count  by  courtesy, 
while  the  "Jook"  is  still  doing  business  at  Sara  Jennings' 
old  stand.  The  press  gave  us  only  a  few  columns  daily 
anent  the  Gould-Castellane  barter  and  sale,  but  it  shoots 
the  Vanderbilt-Marlborough  affair  into  us  by  the  page. 
The  press  can  always  be  depended  upon  to  rise  equal  to  the 
occasion,  and  this  is  too  evidently  the  supreme  crisis  of 
the  universe.  Millions  of  columns  have  been  written  anent 
the  matter,  and  the  deluge  of  intellectual  bilge-water  has 
just  begun.  If  Heaven  and  Earth  should  again  embrace 
to  beget  a  second  Saturnus  the  pencil-pushers  could  not 
be  more  profoundly  impressed. 

And  who  the  devil  are  the  Duke  of  Marlborough  and 
Miss  Vanderbilt,  that  the  world  should  hald  its  breath 
while  they  make  elaborate  preparations  to  contribute,  each 
to  the  misery  of  the  other — to  share  the  same  bed  and 
board?  The  Duke  is  the  lineal  descendant  of  old  John 
Churchill  and  Sara  Jennings,  two  of  the  most  disreputable 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  293 

ducks  that  ever  disgraced  the  earth.  John  utilized  the 
virtue  of  his  sister  to  break  into  the  British  "nobility," 
fawned  at  the  feet  of  her  princely  paramour  so  long  as  he 
had  power  to  promote  his  fortune,  then  turned  traitor 
and  sold  his  services  to  William  III,  by  whom  he  was  ever 
regarded  with  suspicion  and  treated  with  contempt.  Like 
Sextus  Tarquinius  and  Benedict  Arnold,  he  was  a  soldier 
of  some  ability;  but  he  was  more  shameless  than  the  one 
and  more  corrupt  than  the  other.  Arnold  would  not  have 
profited  by  a  sister's  prostitution,  nor  Sextus  have  soiled 
his  hand  with  the  small  wage  of  the  common  soldier.  John 
Churchill,  founder  of  the  House  of  Marlborough,  was 
the  Boss  Tweed  of  his  time,  the  prize  pimp  of  his  day  and 
generation.  As  a  traitor  he  was  the  peer  of  Judas  Iscariot, 
and  he  has  been  equalled  in  shameless  dishonesty  only  by 
his  lineal  descendants.  The  only  assurance  we  have  that 
the  latter  were  not  bastards  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that 
they  were  one  and  all  stamped  from  head  to  heel  with  the 
Marlborough  meanness.  It  is  another  case  of  the  evil  men 
do  living  after  them,  while  the  good  is  interred  with 
their  bones.  Sara  Jennings,  his  wife,  was  eminently  worthy 
so  mean  a  mate.  She  was  a  kind  of  unholy  cross  between 
Xanthippe  and  Sycorax,  the  best  hated  old  heifer  in  all 
England.  Too  cold-blooded  to  play  the  prostitute  herself, 
she  was  content  to  tend  door  and  share  in  the  profit  of  her 
sister-in-law's  shame.  The  fiance  of  Miss  Vanderbilt  is 
descended  from  this  impure  source  thro'  a  long  line  of  titled 
cuckolds  and  shameless  pimps,  and  now  stands  on  the 
ragged  edge  of  poverty,  bartering  to  parvenues  for  bread 
an  empty  dukedom  bought  with  a  female  relative's  dis- 
honor. The  late  Lord  Randolph  Churchill,  uncle  of  the 
present  duke,  was  unquestionably  the  best  of  the  lot;  but 
he  demonstrated  of  what  material  he  was  made  when  he 
failed  to  rip  the  white  liver  out  of  Prince  Collars  and  Cuffs 
when  he  caught  that  royal  popinjay  ftagrante  delict o  with 
"Lady"  Churchill,  at  Windsor  Castle — when  he  accepted 
the  foul  bawd  warm  from  the  embraces  of  that  titled  nin- 
compoop and  permitted  her  to  continue  to  bear  his  name. 
The  father  of  the  present  duke,  and  his  predecessor  in  the 
title  was  universally  conceded  to  be  the  most  contemptible 
cur  in  all  Christendom.  He  had  more  than  the  vices  of  the 
original  Churchill  and  none  of  his  supposed  virtues.  He 
succeeded  in  wedding  a  respectable  woman,  but  she  was 
compelled  to  leave  him  because  of  his  general  cussedness. 
He  then  sold  his  title  to  a  dizzy  New  York  music  teacher 
who  had  managed  to  catch  a  sucker  and  bump  .his  head 
for  several  millions.  He  ran  through  with  Lil  Hammersly's 


294  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

boodle,  was  carried  to  the  grave  with  the  syphilis  and  left 
a  beggarly  title  to  his  particularly  stupid  son,  who  is  now 
bartering-  it  to  the  Vanderbilts. 

Such,  in  brief,  is  the  origin  and  history  of  "the  great 
House  of  Marlborough" — a  plebeian  family  raised  to  the 
peerage  by  prostitution  and  enriched  by  rascality  that  em- 
braced every  crime  in  the  calendar,  from  petty  thievery 
to  base  ingratitude,  from  arrant  hypocrisy  to  high  trea- 
son, to  be  in  turn  pauperized  by  pimps,  beggared  by 
bawds.  There  is  not  a  drop  of  pure  blood  in  the  entire 
family. 

There  has  never  been  one  of  the  name  entitled  to  be 
called  a  gentleman.  The  record  of  the  house  is  black  with 
more  than  Armenian  meanness,  across  its  escutcheon  falls 
the  bar-sinister  of  a  woman's  shame.  The  present  duke 
is  said  to  be  somewhat  better  than  his  degraded  progeni- 
tors. Poverty  makes  even  dukes  humble.  When  a  "noble- 
man" is  unable  to  buy  so  much  as  a  yellow  pot  to  put  in 
his  boudoir  he  is  apt  to  strike  a  moderate  gait ;  but  he  is 
a  Churchill,  and  "an  evil  tree  cannot  bring  forth  good 
fruit."  In  appearance  he  is  a  tough  of  the  toughs.  He 
has  a  head  like  a  Bowery  bouncer  and  the  mug  of  an  ape 
who  has  met  with  an  accident.  When  he  gets  his  grip  on 
the  Vanderbilt  gold  it  is  dollars  to  doughnuts  he  will  use 
it  as  did  his  unlamented  father  the  millions  of  the  gay 
Lil  Hammersly,  who  paid  for  the  privilege  of  being 
kicked  and  cuffed  by  a  genuine  British  "nobleman"  in 
Blenheim  Palace. 

And  the  Vanderbilts?  Two  hundred  years  ago  an  ig- 
norant Hollander  squatted  on  a  patch  of  land  at  Flat 
Bush,  L.  I.,  and  engaged  in  the  laudable  enterprise  of 
raising  cabbages,  while  his  better  half  added  an  occa- 
sional florin  to  the  family  hoard  by  peddling  fish.  At  that 
time  the  name  was  taken  on  the  installment  plan,  being 
written  Van  Der  Bilt.  Old  Bilt  begat  a  son  named  Jacob, 
who  followed  in  the  footsteps  of  his  father,  and  was  poor 
without  being  proud.  He  was  also  a  grower  of  cabbages, 
and  his  gude  wife  not  above  peddling  sprats  from  door  to 
door  and  filing  the  proceeds  away  in  her  ample  yarn 
sock.  In  the  course  of  four  generations  the  Van  Der  Bilts 
had  accumulated  sufficient  boodle  to  buy  a  small  ferry- 
boat, and  began  at  once  to  float  on  to  fortune.  The  name 
was  coupled  up  to  save  stationery  in  writing  it,  for  none 
realized  better  than  they  that  economy  is  the  road  to 
wealth.  By  working  like  the  Old  Harry  and  spending 
never  a  cent,  and  by  the  rise  in  land  values  in  and  around 
New  York,  the  Vanderbilts  became  wealthy  enough  to 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  295 

exchange  barter  in  shrimps  and  sprats  for  deals  in  rail- 
way stocks — to  purchase  a  coronet  to  offset  that  "very 
ancient  and  fish-like  smell"  which  has  so  long  clung  to 
the  descendants  of  old  Aris.  Miss  Consuelo  is  the 
daughter  of  Wm.  K.  Vanderbilt,  a  lively  old  bird  who 
was  recently  divorced  from  his  wife  for  reasons  that  have 
been  kept  a  family  secret.  It  is  the  general  impression,  how- 
ever, that  it  was  a  case  of  mutual  fornication ;  that  while 
"Willie"  was  going  a  rapid  gait  in  dizzy  "Paree,"  Alva 
was  holding  up  her  end  of  the  line  in  London.  Such  is 
the  lineage  of  the  young  lady  who  is  about  to  purchase  a 
descendant  of  old  Judas  Iscariot  Churchill  and  Sara  Jen- 
nings. She  is  a  long,  gaunt,  skinny  young  female  whose 
face  would  frighten  any  animal  but  a  pauper  duke  out  for 
the  "dough."  Her  muscular  arms,  stub-nose  and  big 
feet  proclaim  her  plebeian  origin,  while  if  the  countenance 
be  a  true  index  to  the  intellect,  she  is  the  mental  equal  of 
a  half-baked  Chinese  idol.  If  she  had  not  been  born  with 
a  silver  spoon  in  her  mouth  it  is  doubtful  if  she  could  se- 
cure a  position  in  the  second  row  of  the  ballet  on  her 
shape,  or  a  place  in  a  steam  laundry  by  her  intelligence. 
But  Miss  Consuelo  is  an  American.  Were  she  the  de- 
scendant of  a  Bowery  tough,  as  homely  as  a  hedgehog 
and  as  stupid  as  a  Cleveland  Democrat  she  would  be  in- 
finitely too  good  for  the  best  man  that  ever  bore  the  title 
of  Duke  of  Marborough.  We  are  sorry  for  the  young 
lady,  just  as  we  are  sorry  for  any  calf  that  is  being  led  to 
the  shambles.  She  will  doubtless  wish  a  thousand  times 
that  instead  of  wedding  the  "Jooke"  she  followed  the  ex- 
ample of  her  female  ancestors — married  some  sturdy 
young  Dutch  farmer  and  peddled  fish.  After  the  glamour 
and  glitter  have  worn  away  she  will  wonder  if  the  game 
was  worth  the  candle.  She  will  look  at  the  scorbutic 
subject  of  an  old  woman  and  compare  him  with  the  sov- 
ereigns of  her  native  land  and  wish  to  God  that  she  could 
lose  him. 

"What  fools  these  mortals  be"  —  especially  where  a 
petty  title  and  a  little  money  are  concerned !  Most  of  the 
"great  American  dailies"  have  printed  pictures  of  the 
young  pair  who  are  making  such  elaborate  preparations  to 
occupy  the  same  sheets;  but  the  New  York  World  out- 
toadies  all  Toadydom.  It  informs  an  alleged  intelligent 
world  just  how  tall  Miss  Vanderbilt  is,  the  length  of  her 
foot  and  such  other  information  as  might  be  valuable 
were  she  a  Papuan  slave  being  bartered  for  breeding  pur- 
poses. It  also  devotes  considerable  space  to  a  description 
of  the  lingerie  in  which  she  will  encase  her  "lithe  limbs" 


296  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

during  the  honeymoon.  The  style  is  only  hinted  at,  but  we 
may  presume  that  the  chemise  will  be  provided  with 
handles  and  the  under-garment  patterned  after  Biela's 
comet  or  the  Democratic  party.  The  fit  will  doubtless  be 
au  fait.  The  sartorial  artist  will  doubtless  be  able  to  prop- 
erly attire  any  portion  of  her  anatomy  by  employing  the 
World's  measurements.  We  regret  that  our  great  con- 
temporary has  neglected  to  tell  us  anything  about  the 
lingerie  of  the  bridegroom-elect.  But  perhaps  he  doesn't 
wear  any  at  present.  He  is  probably  waiting  for  the 
Vanderbilt  "settlement"  to  provide  his  noble  anatomy 
with  undershirts. 

I  wish  the  young  turtle-doves  well,  but  can  scarce 
pray  that  their  tribe  may  increase.  I  trust  that  having 
secured  sufficient  of  the  ducats  hoarded  up  by  certain 
Dutch  fish  wives  to  enable  him  to  live  in  comfort,  the 
duke  will  give  us  an  imitation  of  a  nobleman  who  is  try- 
ing to  be  decent;  that  having  purchased  one  of  the  two- 
and-twenty  dukedoms  of  the  United  Kingdom,  the  young 
woman  will  not  pattern  after  her  giddy  aunt  and  hang 
on  princes'  favors  to  the  dishonor  of  her  husband. 

The  papers  state  that  the  capture  of  the  Duke  by  the 
Vanderbiltian  millions  will  result  in  bringing  the  bride's 
parents  together  again — that  they  will  re-marry.  It  is  a 
consummation  devoutly  to  be  wished.  They  seem  to  have 
been  made  for  each  other — to  harmonize  in  tastes  and 
habits  almost  as  well  as  did  old  John  Churchill  and  Sara 
Jennings.  In  view  of  the  aphorism  that  "like  takes  to 
like,"  I  cannot  imagine  how  they  came  to  drift  apart.  If 
Mrs.  Vanderbilt  is  looking  for  a  rake,  Willie  should 
please  her  to  perfection.  If  he  admires  dizzy  females, 
she's  the  girl  for  his  gold.  If  Willie  loves  the  rapid  in 
crinoline  he  should  fairly  worship  his  ci-devant  wife.  Let 
them  forgive  and  forget  and  enjoy  to  the  utmost  the 
beatitude  of  having  a  sure-enough  Duke  for  a  son-in-law 
— of  referring  to  their  daughter  in  the  presence  of  those 
stuck  up  Goulds  as  "the  Duchess."  Willie  and  Alva 
should  spend  a  few  months  of  each  year  at  Blenheim 
Palace — a  place  so  noted  in  the  annals  of  prostitution. 
Vive  la  Van  Der  Bilt !  Vive  la  Marlborough !  The  rep- 
resentative family  of  American  parvenues  and  that  of  Eu- 
ropean pimps  in  holy  alliance  were  a  combination  at 
which  the  majestic  world  may  well  stand  agaze. 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  297 

HUMBUGS  AND  HUMBUGGERY. 
THE  GREAT  AMERICAN  PRODUCT. 

Satan  is  supposed  to  have  been  the  original  Humbug; 
but  he's  a  back  number  now — must  feel  dreadfully  anti- 
quated and  useless  among  so  many  modern  improve- 
ments. 

That  the  American  people  love  to  be  humbugged  long 
since  passed  into  a  proverb.  Humbuggery  may  be  calle^l 
our  national  vice,  our  besetting  sin.  Like  liberty,  it  ap- 
pears to  be  in  the  very  air  we  breathe,  and  we  take  to  it 
as  naturally  as  we  go  into  politics.  Our  entire  social  sys- 
tem has  become  saturated  with  it.  It  is  the  main-spring 
of  many  acts  we  loudly  praise,  the  lode-star  of  men  we 
apotheosize,  is  oftimes  the  warp  and  woof  even  of  the 
mantle  of  charity,  which,  like  a  well-filled  purse — or  a 
tariff  compromise — covers  a  multitude  of  sins. 

There  are  various  kinds  and  classes  of  Humbugs;  but 
reduced  to  the  last  analysis — stripped  of  the  sugar-coat- 
ing by  which  they  impose  on  the  public — they  are  one 
and  all  simply  professors  of  falsehood. 

I  am  sometimes  inclined  to  the  view  that  humbuggery 
is  a  disease,  and  that  some  doctor  will  yet  discover  a  gold- 
cure  for  it — will  demonstrate  that  the  bad  habit  is  due  to 
microbes  that  get  into  a  man's  mind  and  make  trouble 
trying  to  turn  around,  or  to  bacilli  that  bore  holes  in  his 
moral 'character  and  let  his  honesty  leak  out;  for  the  med- 
ical fraternity  has  gravely  informed  us  that  kleptomania 
(sneak-thievery  by  eminently  respectable  people)  and 
dipsomania  (sottishness  by  the  social  salt  of  the 
earth),  are  simply  diseases  that  should  be  treated  with 
pills  and  powders  instead  of  with  penitentiaries  and  whip- 
ping-posts. Now  if  a  man  will  steal  a  saw-mill  and  go 
back  after  the  site  simply  because  his  pericardium  is  out 
of  plumb  or  his  liver  has  gone  into  politics ;  will  nurse  a 
juicy  old  jag  until  it  develops  into  a  combined  museum 
and  menagerie,  because  his  circulation  has  slipped  an  ec- 
centric or  his  stomach  got  out  of  its  natural  orbit,  I  submit, 
in  all  seriousness  that  he  might  be  physically  incapaci- 
tated for  telling  the  truth  by  an  insidious  attack  on  his 
veracity  by  the  dreadful  falsehood  fungi,  and  that  the 
best  way  to  restore  his  moral  equilibrium — to  remove 
him  from  the  category  of  chronic  Humbugs — would  be  to 
fumigate  him. 

The  Lord  once  attempted  to  check  the  Humbug  habit 


298  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

by  striking  liars  dead ;  but  soon  saw  that  such  a  plan 
would  prove  more  fatal  than  a  second  flood — that  there 
wouldn't  be  even  a  Noah's  Ark  picnic  party  of  us  left — 
and  reluctantly  relinquished  it.  Science  has  not  yet  suc- 
ceeded in  mastering  the  disease ;  but  just  give  it  time  and 
it  will  save  the  world  yet — will  find  a  medical  name  for 
every  human  frailty ;  will  be  able  to  tell,  by  looking  at  a 
man's  tongue,  whether  he's  coming  down  with  the  mug- 
wump malaria  or  the  office-holding  hysteria,  and  do 
something  for  him  before  it's  everlastingly  too  late. 

The  very  best  of  people  have  a  touch  of  the  complaint 
— "the  trail  of  the  serpent  is  over  us  all."  Even  our  young 
ladies  are  said  to  be,  to  a  certain  extent,  Humbugs.  I 
have  been  told  that  many  of  them  wear  patent  complex- 
ions, "boughten"  bangs,  and  pad  out  scrawny  forms  until 
they  appear  voluptuous  Junos,  and  thereby  deceive  and 
ensnare,  bedazzle  and  beguile  the  unsuspecting  sons)  of 
men.  I  have  been  told  that  many  of  them  who  are  soft- 
voiced  angels  before  marriage  can  give  a  rusty  buzz-saw 
cards  and  spades  and  beat  it  blind  after  they  have  suc- 
ceeded in  landing  the  confiding  sucker.  But  perhaps  such 
tales  are  only  the  bitter  complainings  of  miserable 
Benedicts  who  have  been  soundly  beaten  at  their  own 
game  of  humbuggery.  Marriage  is,  perhaps,  the  only 
game  of  chance  ever  invented  at  which  it  is  possible  for 
both  players  to  lose.  Too  often,  after  much  sugar-coated 
deception,  and  many  premeditated  misdeals  on  both  sides, 
one  draws  a  blank  and  the  other  a  booby.  After  patient 
angling  in  the  matrimonial  pool,  one  lands  a  stingaree 
and  the  other  a  bull-head.  One  expects  to  capture  a  demi- 
god who  hits  the  earth  only  in  high  places ;  the  other  to 
wed  a  wingless  angel  who  will  make  his  Edenic  bower 
one  long-drawn  sigh  of  ecstatic  bliss.  The  result  is  that 
one  is  tied  up  to  a  slattern  who  slouches  around  the 
house  with  her  hair  on  tins,  in  a  dirty  collar  and  with  a 
dime  novel,  a  temper  like  aqua-fortis  and  a  voice  like  a 
cat-fight ;  the  other  a  hoodlum  who  comes  home  from  the 
lodge  at  2  g.  m.  and  whoops  and  howls  for  her  to  come 
down  and  help  him  hunt  for  the  keyhole,  and  is  then 
snailed  in  by  a  policeman  before  she  can  frame  a  curtain 
lecture  or  find  the  rolling  pin. 


False  Pride  is  the  father  of  humbuggery,  the  parent  of 
Fraud.  We  are  Humbugs  because  we  desire  that  our 
fellows  think  us  better,  braver,  brighter,  perhaps  richer 
than  we  really  are.  We  practice  humbuggery  to  attain 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  299 

social  position  to  which  we  are  entitled  by  neither  birth 
nor  brains,  to  acquire  wealth  for  which  we  render  no 
equivalent,  to  procure  power  we  cannot  wisely  employ. 

While  proclaiming  love  of  democracy  we  purchase 
peers  for  our  daughters.  While  boasting  liberty  of  speech 
we  assail  like  demons  those  who  presume  to  dissent  from 
our  opinions  in  either  religion  or  politics. 

History  is  full  of  Humbugs  and  liberty  itself  ofttimes  but 
a  gilded  lie.  No  man  is  really  free  who  is  dependent  upon 
the  good  will  of  others  for  employment.  There  can  be  no 
true  liberty  where  Prejudice  usurps  the  throne  of  Rea- 
son. Men  are  slaves  instead  of  sovereigns  when  they  suffer 
themselves  to  be  held  in  iron  thrall  by  political  dogma  or 
religious  creed,  blindly  accepting  the  ipse  dixit  of  others 
instead  of  exercising  to  the  utmost  the  intelligence  which 
God  hath  given  them. 

I  have  said  that  charity  itself  is  ofttimes  a  Humbug. 
It  is  so  when  it  becomes  the  handmaid  of  ostentation  in- 
stead of  the  true  almoner  of  the  heart;  or  when  men  give 
to  the  poor  only  because  it  is  "lending  to  the  Lord,"  then 
expect  compound  interest. 

That  philanthropist  is  a  fraud  who,  after  piling  up  a 
colossal  fortune  at  the  expense  of  the  common  people, 
leaves  it  to  found  an  educational  or  eleemosynary  insti- 
tute when  death  calls  him  across  the  dark  river.  Know- 
ing that  Charon's  boat  is  purely  a  passenger  packet — 
that  it  carries  no  freight,  however  precious — he  drops  his 
dollars  with  a  sigh ;  but,  determined  to  reap  some  benefit 
from  boodle  his  itching  hand  can  no  longer  hold,  he  de- 
crees that  it  be  used  to  found  some  charitable  fake  to  pre- 
vent himself  being  forgotten — some  pitiful  institute  where 
a  few  of  the  wretched  victims  of  his  rapacious  greed  may 
get  a  plate  of  starvation  soup,  or  a  prayer-book,  and  bless 
their  benefactor's  name.  The  very  monument  erected 
over  bones  of  the  sanctimonious  old  skin-flint  is  a  fraud ; 
flaunts  a  string  of  colossal  falsehoods  in  the  face  of  the 
world ;  piously  points  to  heaven — perhaps  to  indicate  that 
Satan  refused  to  receive  him  and  sent  him  back  to  St. 
Peter  with  a  request  that  he  make  other  arrangements. 


Many  of  the  martyrs  whose  memory  we  revere,  of  the 
saints  we  apotheosize,  of  the  heroes  we  enshrine  in  his- 
tory, are  one-third  fraud  and  two-thirds  fake.  The  man 
who  can  grow  in  grace  while  his  pet  corn's  in  chancery, 
or  lose  an  election  without  spilling  his  moral  character; 
who  can  wait  an  hour  for  his  dinner  without  walking  all 


300  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

over  the  nerves  of  his  wife,  or  crawl  out  of  bed  in  the 
middle  of  his  first  nap  and  rustle  till  the  cold,  gray  dawn 
with  a  brace  of  colicky  kids,  without  broadly  insinuating 
that  he  was  a  copper-riveted,  nickel-plated,  automatic, 
double-cylinder  idiot  to  ever  get  married,  is  a  greater 
hero  than  he  that  taketh  a  city. 

The  place  to  take  the  true  measure  of  a  man  is  not  the 
market-place  or  the  amen-corner,  not  the  forum  or  the 
field,  but  at  his  fireside.  There  he  lays  aside  his  mask 
and  you  may  learn  whether  he's  imp  or  angel,  king  or  cur, 
hero  or  Humbug.  I  care  not  what  the  world  says  of  him 
— whether  it  crown  him  with  bays  or  pelt  him  with  bad 
eggs;  I  care  never  a  copper  what  his  reputation  or  re- 
ligion may  toe:  If  his  babes  dread  his  home-coming  and 
his  better-half  swallows  her  heart  every  time  she  has  to 
ask  him  for  a  five  dollar  bill,  he's  a  fraud  of  the  first 
water,  even  tho'  he  prays  night  and  morn  till  he's  black 
in  the  face  and  howls  hallelujah  till  he  shakes  the  eternal 
hills.  But  if  his  children  rush  to  the  front  gate  to  greet 
him,  and  love's  own  sunshine  illumes  the  face  of  his  wife 
when  she  hears  his  footfall,  you  can  take  it  for  granted 
that  he's  true  gold,  for  his  home's  a  heaven,  and  the  Hum- 
bug never  gets  that  near  the  great  white  throne  of  God. 
He  may  be  a  rank  atheist  and  a  red-flag  anarchist,  a  Mor- 
mon and  a  mugwump;  he  may  buy  votes  in  blocks-of- 
five  and  bet  on  the  election;  he  may  deal  'em  from  the 
bottom  of  the  deck  and  drink  beer  till  he  can't  tell  a  silver 
dollar  from  a  circular  saw,  and  still  be  an  infinitely  better 
man  than  the  cowardly  little  Humbug  who's  all  suavity 
in  society,  but  who  makes  his  home  a  hell — who  vents 
upon  the  hapless  heads  of  wife  and  children  the  ill-nature 
he  would  like  to  inflict  on  his  fellow-men,  but  dares  not. 
I  can  forgive  much  in  that  fellow  mortal  who  would  rath- 
er make  men  swear  than  women  weep ;  who  would  rath- 
er have  the  hate  of  the  whole  he-world  than  the  contempt 
of  his  wife — who  would  rather  call  anger  to  the  eyes  of  a 
king  than  fear  to  the  face  of  a  child. 

The  hero  is  not  he  that  strives  with  the  world  for  wit- 
ness— who  seeks  the  bubble  fame  at  the  cannon's  brazen 
lip  and  risks  his  life  that  he  may  live  forever. 

"Think  not  that  helm  and  harness  are  signs  of  valor  true ; 
Peace  hath  higher  tests  of  manhood  than  battles  ever  knew." 

To  bear  with  becoming'  grace  the  slings  and  arrows  of 
outrageous  fortune;  to  find  our  heaven  in  others'  happi- 
ness, and  for  their  sake  to  sacrifice  and  suffer  wrongs  that 
might  be  righted  with  a  thread  of  steel;  to  live  an  honest 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  301 

life  in  a  land  where  Truth  doth  feed  on  crusts  while 
Falsehood  fattens  at  Lucullean  feasts,  requires  more  true 
manhood,  more  moral  stamina,  more  unadulterated  sand 
than  to  follow  a  flag  into  the  very  jaws  of  hell  or  die  for 
the  faith  in  the  auto  da  fe.  Heroes?  Why  unurn  the 
ashes  of  the  half-forgotten  dead  and  pore  o'er  the  musty 
pages  of  the  past  for  names  to  glorify?  If  you  would 
find  heroes  grander,  martyrs  more  noble  and  saints  of 
more  sanctity  than  Rubens  ever  painted  or  immortal 
Homer  sang ;  who,  without  Achilles'  armor,  have  slain 
an  hundred  Hectors ;  without  Samsonian  locks  have  torn 
the  lion;  without  the  sword  of  Michael  have  thrown  down 
the  gage  to  all  the  embattled  hosts  of  hell,  seek  not  in  the 
musty  tomes  of  history,  but  in  the  hearts  and  homes  of 
the  self-sacrificing  wives  and  mothers  of  this  great 
world. 

"God  could  not  be  everywhere,"  says  the  proverb, 
"therefore  he  made  mothers," 

Let  the  heroes  of  history  have  their  due;  still  I  imagine 
the  world  would  have  been  much  the  same  had  Alexander 
died  of  cholera-infantum  or  grown  up  a  harmless  dude. 
I  don't  thing  the  earth  unbalanced  would  from  its  orbit 
fly  had  Caesar  been  drowned  in  the  Rubicon,  or  Cleveland 
never  been  born.  I  imagine  that  Greece  would  have  hum- 
bled the  Persian  pride  had  there  been  no  Thermopylae, 
that  Rome  would  have  ruled  the  world  had  Scaevola's 
good  right  hand  not  hissed  in  the  Tuscan  fire.  It  is  even 
possible  that  civilization  would  have  stood  the  shocks  had 
"Lanky  Bob"  and  "Gentleman  Jim"  met  on  Texas  soil — 
that  the  second-term  boom  of  "our  heroic  young  Chris- 
tian governor"  would  have  lost  no  gas.  One  catfish  does 
not  make  a  creek  nor  one  hero  a  nation.  The  waves  do 
not  make  the  sea,  but  the  sea  furnishes  forth  the  waves. 
Leonidas  were  lost  to  history  but  for  the  three  hundred 
nameless  braves  who  backed  his  bluff.  Had  there  been 
but  one  Cromwell  Charles  the  First  would  have  kept  his 
head.  In  Washington's  deathless  splendor  gleams  the 
glory  of  forgotten  millions,  and  the  history  of  Bonaparte 
is  written  with  blood  of  the  unknown  brave. 


Humbuggery,  fraud,  deception  everywhere. 

"All  the  world's  a  stage 
And  all  the  men  and  women  merely  players" — 

Momus  the  major-domo,  the  millions  en  masque.     Even 
friendship  is  becoming  a  screaming  farce,  intended  to  pro- 


302  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

mote  the  social  fortune  or  fill  the  purse.  We  fawn  that 
thrift  may  follow ;  are  prodigal  of  sweet  words  because 
they  cost  nothing  and  swell  the  sails  of  many  a  rich  ar- 
gosy ;  but  weigh  every  penny  we  put  forth,  and  carefully 
calculate  the  chance  of  gain  or  loss.  It's  heads  I  win,  tails 
you  lose,  and  when  we  cannot  play  it  on  that  principle  we 
promptly  jump  the  game. 

"Who  steals  my  purse  steals  trash." 
That's  Shakespeare. 

"He  that  filches  from  me  my  good  name    .     .     .     makes  me  poor 
indeed." 

That's  nonsense.  Reputation  is  but  the  ephemeral  dew 
on  character's  everlasting  gold;  but  he  that  steals  a  hu- 
man heart  and  tramples  it  beneath  his  brutal  heel ;  he 
that  feigns  a  friendship  he  does  not  feel;  he  that  fawns 
upon  his  fellows  and  hugs  them  hard  and  after  scandals 
them,  is  the  foulest  fraud  in  all  this  land  of  fakes,  the 
most  hideous  Humbug  in  all  hell's  unclean  hierarchy. 

I  am  sometimes  tempted  to  believe  that  the  only  friend- 
ship that  will  stand  fire  is  that  of  a  yellow  dog  for  a  paup- 
er negro.  Strike  a  friend  for  a  small  loan  and  his  affection 
grows  suddenly  cold;  lose  your  fortune  and  your  sweet- 
heart sends  you  word  that  she  will  be  a  sister  to  you ; 
your  brother  will  betray  you  for  boodle,  your  father  fight 
you  for  a  foolish  flag  and  your  lieirs-at-law  will  dance 
when  they  hear  of  your  death ;  but  the  devotion  of  a  yal- 
ler  dog  to  a  worthless  nigger  hath  all  seasons  for  its  own. 


But  the  Humbug  for  whom  I  have  least  use  is  the  man 
who  assiduously  damns  the  Rum  Demon ;  makes  tearful 
temperance  talks;  ostentatiously  votes  the  prohibition 
ticket;  groans  like  a  sick  calf  hit  by  a  battering-ram 
whenever  he  sees  a  young  man  come  out  of  a  barroom; 
then  sneaks  up  a  dirty  alley,  crawls  thro'  the  side  door  of 
a  second-class  saloon;  calls  for  the  cheapest  whiskey  in 
the  shop,  runs  the  glass  over  trying  to  get  the  worth  of 
his  money ;  pours  it  down  at  a  gulp  and  scoots  in  a  hurry 
lest  somebody  ask  him  to  treat;  who  has  a  chronic  tooth- 
ache— in  the  stomach — which  nothing  but  drugstore 
whiskey  will  relieve;  who  keeps  a  jug  of  dollar-a-gallon 
bug-juice  hid  under  his  bed  and  sneaks  to  it  like  a  thiev- 
ing hyena  digging  up  a  dead  nigger — rents  his  property 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  303 

for  saloon  purposes,  then  piously  prays  the  Lord  to  pro- 
tect the  young  from  temptation. 

*     *     * 

But  perhaps  the  prince  of  Humbugs,  the  incarnation  of 
fraud,  the  apotheosis  of  audacity,  is  the  street-corner  pol- 
itician. He  towers  above  his  fellow  fakes  like  Saul  above 
his  brethren.  I  have  been  time  and  again  instructed  in 
the  most  intricate  problems  of  public  polity — questions 
that  have  perplexed  the  wisest  statesmen  of  the  world — 
by  men  who  had  never  read  a  single  standard  work  on  po- 
litical economy,  and  who  could  not  tell  to  save  their  souls 
— granting  that  they  possess  such  perishable  property — 
whether  Adam  Smith  wrote  the  "Wealth  of  Nations"  or 
the  Lord's  Prayer ;  who  were  not  familiar  with  the  consti- 
tution of  their  own  state,  or  the  face  of  a  receipted  wash- 
bill  ;  who  could  scarce  tell  a  sloop  from  a  ship,  a  bill  of 
lading  from  a  sight  draft ;  a  hydraulic  ram  from  a  he-goat 
unless  they  were  properly  labeled.  Yet  no  question  can 
arise  in  metaphysics  or  morals,  government  or  general- 
ship, upon  which  these  great  little  men  do  not  presume 
to  speak  with  the  authoritative  assurance  of  a  Lord  Chief 
Justice — or  a  six-foot  woman  addressing  a  four-foot  hus- 
band. They  invariably  know  it  all.  They  could  teach 
Solomon  and  the  Seven  Wise  Men  wisdom,  and  had  they 
been  on  earth  when  Almighty  God  wrote  the  Ten  Com- 
mandments they  would  have  moved  an  amendment  or 
drafted  a  minority  report. 

And  these  are  the  fellows  who  frame  our  political  plat- 
forms and  dominate  our  elections — whose  boundless  cu- 
pidity, colossal  ignorance  and  supernal  gall  bring  about 
starvation  in  a  land  of  plenty — divide  the  most  industri- 
ous and  progressive  people  that  ever  graced  the  footstool 
of  Almighty  God,  into  bloated  millionaires  and  groveling 
mendicants. 

Even  patriotism  has  become  a  Humbug — has  been 
supplanted  by  partisanship,  and  now  all  are  for  party  and 
none  are  for  the  state.  On  July  4  we  shout  for  the  old  flag, 
and  all  the  rest  of  the  year  we  clamor  for  an  appropria- 
tion. The  man  who  is  kicked  by  a  nightmare  while  dream- 
ing of  the  draft  demands  a  pension  and  every  burning  pa- 
triot wants  an  office.  Twice,  yea,  thrice  within  the  mem- 
ory of  men  now  living,  America  has  been  on  the  very 
verge  of  an  industrial  revolution,  a  Reign  of  Terror;  yet 
we  continue  to  hang  our  second  Providence  on  a  job-lot 
of  politcal  jacksnipes  who  carry  their  patriotism  in  their 
pockets  and  their  sense  under  their  surcingles.  While  we 


304  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

who  feed  three  times  a  day;  who  have  a  cocktail  every 
morning  and  a  clean,  shirt  occasionally,  are  boasting  of 
our  allegiance  to  "the  grand  old  party,"  or  prating  of  the 
principles  of  Jeffersonian  democracy — are  bliridly  trailing 
in  the  wake  of  some  partisan  band-wagon  like  a  brindle 
calf  behind  a  Kansas  hay-cart — this  nation,  born  of  our 
fathers'  blood  and  sanctified  by  our  mothers'  tears,  is 
dominated  by  political  self-seekers  who  have  taken  for 
their  motto,  "After  us  the  deluge." 


Once  after  holding  forth  at  some  length  on  Humbugs, 
a  physician  said  to  me : 

"Ah-er — you-ah — didn't  mention  the  medical  profes- 
sion." 

"No,"  I  replied,  "the  power  of  language  hath  its  limits." 

The  medical,  mark  you,  is  the  noblest  of  all  profes- 
sions. It  contains  many  learned  and  able  men  who  devote 
their  lives  unselfishly  to  the  amelioration  of  human  misery ; 
but  I  much  doubt  whether  one-half  the  M.  D.'s  now  send- 
ing people  to  the  drug  stores  with  cipher  dispatches,  could 
tell  what  was  the  matter  with  a  suffering  mortal  were  he 
transparent  as  glass  and  lit  up  by  electricity.  There  are 
doctors  doping  people  with  powerful  drugs,  who  couldn't 
tell  whether  a  patient  had  a  case  of  cholera-morbus  or  was 
afflicted  with  an  incurable  itch  for  office — who  have  acquired 
their  medical-  information  from  the  almanacs  and  could  not 
distinguish  between  a  bunion  and  a  stone-bruise  or  find  the 
joints  in  a  string  of  sausage  with  a  search-warrant. 

I  have  noticed  that  when  the  doctors  took  to  writing 
their  prescriptions  in  Latin  it  quickly  became  a  dead  lan- 
guage— that  when  I  take  the  poet's  advice  and  throw 
physic  to  the  dogs,  their  numbers  rapidly  decrease.  But 
the  doctors  are  jolly  good  fellows.  Let  it  be  recorded  to 
their  eternal  credit,  that,  whatever  may  be  their  faults,  pre- 
cious few  of  them  will  practice  in  their  own  families.  I 
have  often  wished  that  I  was  a  doctor  of  medicine  instead 
of  a  doctor  of  divinity.  There  are  several  fellows  for  whom 
I'd  like  to  prescribe.  There's  a  strong  affinity  between  the 
two  professions.  The  D.  D.'s  deal  in  faith  and  prayer,  the 
M.  D.'s  in  faith  and  pills. 

I  have  been  frequently  asked  why,  in  lecturing  on  Hum- 
bugs, I  skip  the  lawyers.  There  are  some  subjects  to 
which  a  lecturer  must  lead  up  gradually;  so  I  discuss  the 
doctors  in  my  discourse  on  Humbugs  and  save  the  attorneys 
for  my  talk  on  Gall. 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  305 

Even  our  boasted  educational  system  is  half  a  Humbug. 
Too  many  of  our  professers  fondly  imagine  that  when  they 
have  crammed  the  dry  formulas  of  half  a  dozen  sciences 
into  a  small  head — perhaps  designed  by  the  Deity  to  fur- 
nish the  directive  wisdom  for  a  scavenger  cart;  when  they 
have  taught  a  two-legged  moon-calf  to  glibly  read  in  cer- 
tain deacl  languages  things  it  can  in  nowise  comprehend 
— patiently  pumped  into  it  a  whole  congeries  of  things  that 
defy  its  mental  digestive  apparatus — that  it  is  actually 
educated,  if  not  enlightened.  And  perhaps  it  is — after  the 
manner  of  the  trick  mule  or  the  pig  that  plays  cards.  The 
attempt  of  Gulliver  scientists  to  calcine  ice  into  gunpowder 
were  not  more  ridiculous  than  trying  to  transform  a  fool 
into  a  philosopher  by  the  alchemy  of  education.  If  it  be 
a  waste  of  lather  to  shave  an  ass,  what  must  it  be  to  edu- 
cate an  idiot?  True  education  consists  in  the  acquirement 
of  useful  information ;  yet  I  have  seen  college  graduates 
— even  men  sporting  professional  sheepskins — who  couldn't 
tell  whether  Gladstone's  an  English  statesman  or  an  Irish 
policeman.  They  knew  all  about  Greek  roots  but  couldn't 
tell  a  carrot  from  a  parsnip.  They  could  decipher  a  cunei- 
form inscription,  perhaps,  and  state  whether  a  pebble  be- 
longed to  the  paleozoic  or  some  other  period;  but  couldn't 
tell  a  subpoena  from  a  search-warrant,  a  box  of  vermicelli 
from  a  bundle  of  fishworms. 

We  pore  over  books  too  much  and  reflect  too  little;  de- 
pend too  much  on  others,  too  little  upon  ourselves.  We 
make  of  our  heads  cold-storage  warehouses  for  other  peo- 
ple's ideas,  instead  of  standing  up  in  our  own  independent, 
god-like  individuality.  Bacon  says  that  reading  makes  a 
full  man.  Perhaps  so,  but  it  makes  a  great  deal  of  differ- 
ence what  a  fellow's  full  of.  Too  many  who  fondly  imagine 
themselves  educated,  much  resemble  Mark  Twain's  frog 
with  its  stomach  full  of  shot — they  are  crushed  to  earth  by 
the  things  they  have  swallowed. 

Neither  the  public  nor  any  other  school  system  has  ever 
produced  one  really  great  man.  Those  who  occupy  the 
dias-throne  among  the  immortals,  contended  single-handed 
with  the  darkness  of  ignorance  and  the  devil  of  dogmatism. 
Columbus  scorned  the  schools  and  discovered  a  world. 
Napoleon  revolutionized  the  science  of  war  and  made  him- 
self master  of  Europe.  Bismarck  mocked  at  precedent,  and 
United  Germany  stood  forth  a  giant.  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
ignored  the  learning  of  the  Levites,  and  around  the  world 
arose  the  fanes  of  a  new  faith. 

Reading  is  the  nurse  of  culture;  reflection  the  mother 
of  genius.  Our  great  religions  were  born  in  the  desert. 


306  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

Our  grandest  philosophers  budded  and  burgeoned  in  the 
wilderness.  The  noblest  poesy  that  ever  swept  the  human 
harpsichord  was  born  in  the  brain  of  a  beggar,  came  bub- 
bling from  the  heart  of  the  blind ;  and  when  all  the  magi 
of  the  Medes,  and  all  the  great  philosophers  of  Greece  had 
failed  to  furnish  forth  a  jurisprudence  just  to  all,  semi- 
barbarous  Rome  laid  down  those  laws  by  which,  even  from 
the  grave  of  her  glory,  she  still  rules  the  majestic  "world. 

I  have  been  accused  of  being  the  enemy  of  education; 
but  then  I  have  been  accused  of  almost  everything;  so  one 
count  more  or  less  in  the  indictment  doesn't  matter.  I 
am  not  opposed  to  education  that  is  useful ;  but  why  should 
we  pay  people  to  fill  the  empty  heads  of  fools  with  soap 
and  sawdust? 

Perhaps  the  most  aggressive  fraud  that  infests  the  earth 
is  the  professional  atheist — the  man  whose  chief  mental 
stock-in-trade  consists  of  doubt  and  denial  of  revealed  re- 
ligion, so-called. 

About  the  time  a  youngster  first  feels  an  irresistible  im- 
pulse to  make  a  fool  of  himself  wherever  a  female  smiles 
upon  him;  when  he's  reached  that  critical  stage  in  life's 
journey  when  he  imagines  that  he  knows  much  more  than 
his  father,  he  begins  to  doubt  the  religion  of  his  mother; 
shrewdly  asks  his  Sunday-school  teacher  who  made  God; 
demonstrates  by  the  aid  of  natural  history  diagrams,  that 
a  large  whale  could  in  nowise  swallow  a  small  prophet — 
that  if  he  did  succeed  in  relegating  him  to  its  internal 
economy  it  were  impossible  for  him  to  slosh  around  for 
three  days  and  nights  in  the  gastric  juices  without  becom- 
ing much  the  worse  for  wear.  He  attempts  to  rip  religion 
up  by  the  roots  and  reform  the  world  while  you  wait,  but 
soon  learns  that  he's  got  a  government  contract  on  his  hands, 
— that  the  man  who  can  drive  the  Deity  out  of  the  hearts 
and  homes  of  this  land  can  make  a  fortune  turning  artesian 
Dwells  inside  out  and  peddling  them  for  telegraph  poles.  You 
can't  do  it,  son.  Religion  is  the  backbone  of  the  body 
social.  Sometimes  it's  unbending  as  a  boarding-house 
biscuit,  and  sometimes  it's  a  bad  quality  of  gutta-percha; 
but  we  couldn't  get  far  without  it.  Most  youths  have  to 
pass  thro'  a  period  of  doubt  and  denial — catch  the  infidel 
humor  just  as  they  do  the  measles  and  mumps ;  but  they 
eventually  learn  that  the  fear  of  God  is  the  beginning  of 
wisdom. 

There  was  never  an  atheistical  book  written ;  there  was 
never  an  infidel  argument  penned  that  touched  the  core  of 
any  religion,  Christian  or  Pagan.  Bibles,  Korans,  Zande- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  307 

vestas — all  sacred  books — are  but  the  feeble  efforts  of 
finite  man  to  interpret  the  infinite;  to  speak  forth  the 
unspeakable;  to  reduce  to  intelligible  human  characters 
the  flame-written  hieroglyphs  of  the  sky.  Who  made 
God?  Suppose,  Mr.  Atheist,  that  I  find  thee  an  answer? 
Who  will  furnish  thee  with  an  intellect  to  understand  it? 
How  will  you  comprehend  the  genesis  of  a  God  when  the 
wisest  man  for  whom  Christ  died  cannot  tell  why  water  runs 
down  hill  instead  of  up — cannot  understand  the  basic 
principle  of  the  law  of  gravitation — cannot  even  guess  why 
Gov.  Culberson  encouraged  the  managers  of  Corbett  and 
Fitzsimmons  to  bring  the  mill  to  Texas,  then  knocked  it 
out  at  a  special  session  of  the  legislature  at  the  expense  of 
the  general  public. 

An  atheist  once  solemnly  assured  me  that  he  couldn't 
possibly  believe  anything  which  he  couldn't  prove;  but  when 
I  asked  him  what  led  him  to  take  such  a  lively  interest  in 
the  welfare  of  his  wife's  children,  he  became  almost  as 
angry  as  a  Calvinist  whose  confession  of  faith  had  been 
called  in  question.  Figure  up  how  many  things  you  can 
prove  of  those  you  believe,  and  you'll  find  that  you  have 
got  to  do  a  credit  business  or  go  into  intellectual  bank- 
ruptcy. 

But  the  man  who  denies  the  existence  of  the  Deity  be- 
cause he  cannot  comprehend  his  origin,  is  even  less  a  Hum- 
bug than  the  one  who  knows  all  about  him — the  pitiful 
dogmatizcr  who  devotes  his  life  to  the  defense  of  some  poor 
little  guess-work  interpretation  of  the  mysterious  plans  of 
him  who  brings  forth  Mazaroth  in  his  season  and  guides 
Arcturus  with  his  sons. 

Dogmatism  is  the  fecund  mother  of  doubt,  a  manacle  on 
the  human  mind,  a  brake  on  the  golden  wheel  of  Christian 
progress ;  and  every  dogmatizer,  whether  in  science,  politics 
or  religion,  is  consciously  or  unconsciously,  a  Humbug. 
You  know,  do  you?  Know  what?  And  who  told  you? 
Why,  the  man  in  whose  mighty  intellect  was  stored  the 
world's  wisdom ;  whose  words  have  come  down  to  us  from 
the  distant  past  as  oracles,  overshadowing  even  Solomon  and 
Shakespeare,  wasn't  quite  sure  of  his  own  existence.  Men 
frequently  tell  me  that  what  they  see  they  know.  Well, 
they've  got  to  drink  mighty  little  Prohibition  whisky  if 
they  do ;  otherwise  they  are  liable  to  see  things  they'll  need 
an  introduction  to.  The  wisest  is  he  that  knows  only  that 
he  knows  nothing.  Omniscient  God  only  knows.  We — 
you  ^and  I — are  only  troubled  with  morbid  little-ideas,  sired 
by  circumstance  and  dammed  by  folly.  We  don't  even  know 


308  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

how  the  Democracy  stands  on  the  silver  question  or  what 
caused  the  slump  in  the  late  election. 


The  average  human  head,  like  an  egg — or  a  crock  of 
clabber — absorbs  the  flavor  of  its  surroundings.  It  is 
chiefly  a  question  of  environment  whether  we  grow  up 
Catholics  or  Protestants,  Republicans  or  Democrats,  Popu- 
lists or  political  nondescripts.  And  yet  we  adhere  to  opin- 
ions we  have  inherited  with  all  the  tenacity  of  a  dog  to  a 
bone  or  an  American  miser  to  a  ten  dollar  bill.  We  assume 
that  our  faith  political  and  our  creed  religious  are  founded 
upon  our  reason,  when  they  were  really  made  for  us  by 
social  conditions  over  which  we  had  little  control.  We 
even  succeed  in  humbugging  ourselves  into  the  belief  that 
we  are  the  people  and  that  wisdom  will  die  with  us,  when 
the  fact  is  that  our  head  is  loaded  with  out-of-date  lumber — 
our  every  idea  moulded  or  modified  by  barbarians  who  were 
in  the  bone-yard  before  Methusaleh  was  born. 

Society  is  a  vast  organism  in  which  the  individual  is 
but  an  atom.  It  is  a  monstrous  tree — a  veritable  Ygdrasyl 
— penetrating  both  the  region  of  darkness  and  the  realm 
of  light.  Whatever  its  peculiarities — whether  monarchical 
or  republican,  Christian  or  Pagan — it  is  a  goodly  tree  when 
it  brings  forth  good  fruit — when  its  boughs  bend  with 
Apples  of  Hesperides  and  in  its  grateful  shade  is  reared 
the  shrine  of  God.  Be  it  of  what  shape  it  may,  it  is  an 
evil  tree  w'hen  its  fruit  is  Apples  of  Sodom  and  it  casts 
a  upas-shadow  upon  the  earth.  If  we  cannot  gather  grapes 
of  thorns  or  figs  of  thistles,  how<  can  a  society  that  is  essen- 
tially false  foster  that  which  is  literally  true?  The  body 
social,  of  which  we  proudly  boast,  is  producing  dodos  in- 
stead of  King  Davids,  peanut-politicians  instead  of 
heaven-inspired  poets,  cranks  instead  of  crusaders, 
Humbugs  rather  than  heroes.  Instead  of  exercising 
in  the  campus  martius  our  sons  cultivate  the  Henglish 
hawkcent  and  the  London  lope.  In  the  olden  days  the 
glory  of  the  young  man  was  his  strength;  now  it  is  his 
chrysanthemum  and  his  collar.  And  it  is  going  from  bad  to 
worse  in  a  ratio  of  geometrical  progression;  for  how  can 
effeminate  men — a  cane-sucking,  primping,  mincing,  af- 
fected conglomeration  of  masculine  inanity  and  asininity  be- 
get world-compellers?  How  can  women  who  care  much 
what  is  on  the  outside  and  little  w>hat  is  on  the  inside  of 
their  heads,  and  whom  a  box  of  lily-white,  a  French  novel, 
a  poodle-dog  and  another  dude  will  make  superlatively 
happy,  suckle  aught  but  fops  and  fools? 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  309 

Yet  we  boast  of  progress!  Progress  whither?  From 
the  savage  who  knew  nothing  to  the  dude  who  knows  less. 
From  the  barbarian  who'd  plundered  your  baggage,  to  the 
civilized  Shylock  who'd  steal  the  very  earth  from  under 
your  feet.  From  that  state  wherein  American  sovereigns, 
however  poor,  considered  themselves  the  equals  of  kings 
and  the  superiors  of  princes,  to  that  moral  degradation  and 
national  decay  in  which  they  purchase  the  scurvy  spawn 
of  petty  dukes  as  husbands  for  our  daughters.  By  the 
splendor  of  God,  I'd  rather  be  a  naked  Fiji  Islander,  danc- 
ing about  a  broiled  missionary  with  a  bull-ring  in  my  nose, 
than  a  simpering  "saiwciety"  simpleton,  wearing  my  little 
intellectual  apparatus  to  a  frazzle  with  a  study  of  neckties! 


Some  of  my  critics  have  kindly  suggested  that  the  Lord 
made  a  great  mistake  in  not  consulting  me  when  he  made 
the  world;  thereby  ascertaining  just  how  I  would  like 
to  have  it.  I  was  not  consulted  anent  the  creation  of  the 
Cosmos,  and  perhaps  it  is  just  as  well  for  them  that  I 
wasn't — they  might  not  be  here.  Too  many  forget  that 
while  the  Lord  made  the  world,  the  devil  has  been 
busy  ever  since  putting  on  the  finishing  touches.  Why, 
he  began  on  the  first  woman  before  she  was  a  week  old, 
and  he  has  been  playing  schoolmaster  to  her  sons  ever 
since.  I  confess  to  a  sneaking  respect  for  Satan,  for  he  is 
pre-eminently  a  success  in  his  chosen  profession.  He's 
playing  a  desperate  game  against  omnipotent  power  and 
is  more  than  holding  his  own.  He  sat  into  the  game  with 
a  cash  capital  of  one  snake;  now  he's  got  half  the  globe 
grabbed  and  an  option  on  the  other  half. 

1  have  been  called  a  defender  of  the  devil;  but  I  hope 
that  won't  prejudice  the  ladies  against  me,  as  it  was  a 
woman  that  discovered  him.  I  confess  to  the  belief  that 
Satan  is  a  gentleman  compared  with  some  of  his  very 
humble  servants.  We  are  told  that  he  is  a  fallen  angel 
who  found  pride  a  stumbling-block — that  he  tripped  over 
it  and  plunged  down  to  infinite  despair;  but  tho'  (he  fell 
further  than  a  pigeon  could  fly  in  a  week,  the  world  is 
full  of  frauds  who  could  not  climb  up  to  his  level  in  a 
month;  who  can  no  more  claim  kinship  with  him  in  their 
cussedness  than  a  thieving  hyena  can  say  to  the  royal 
beast  of  Bengal,  'Thou  art  my  brother."  They  are  not 
fallen  angels;  they  are  risen  vermin.  They  didn't  come 
down  from  thrones  in  heaven  like  falling  stars;  they 
crawled  up  from  holes  in  the  earth  like  vicious  little  pis- 
mires. What  can  proud  Lucifer  have  in  common  with 


310  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

the  craven  hypocrite,  who  prays  with  his  lips  while  plot- 
ting petty  larceny  in  his  heart?  Imagine  the  lord  of  the 
lower  world  seeking  the  miscroscopic  souls  of  men  who 
badger,  brow-beat  and  bully-rag  their  better  halves  for 
spending  a  dollar  for  a  new  calico  dress,  then  blow  in 
a  dozen  times  as  much  with  the  dice-box  in  a  bar-room, 
trying  to  beat  some  other  long-eared  burro  out  of  a  thim- 
ble-full of  bug-juice  or  a  schooner  o'  beer!  I  don't  be- 
lieve Satan  wants  'em.  I  think  if  they  dodged  the  quaran- 
tine officers  and  got  in  amongst  those  erstwhile  angels 
now  peopling  the  dark  regions  of  the  damned,  the  doc- 
tors of  that  black  abode  would  decide  that  they  were 
cholera  microbes  or  itch-bacilli  and  order  the  place  fumi- 
gated. 


But  speaking  of  the  devil — were  any  of  you  ever  in  love? 
I'm  talking  about  the  sure-enough,  old-fashioned  com- 
plaint that  makes  a  man  miss  meals  and  lose  sleep, 
write  spring  poetry  and  misplace  his  appetite  for  plug 
tobacco ;  not  of  the  new-fangled  varioloid  that  yields  to 
matrimonial  treatment.  There's  a  great  deal  of  sugar- 
coated  humbuggery  about  this  thing  we  call  love.  It  re- 
minds me  of  the  sulphur  and  molasses  my  careful  Presby- 
terian parents  used  to  pour  into  me  in  the  gentle  spring- 
time. I  don't  remember  why  they  gave  it  to  me;  but  it 
was  probably  because  they  didn't  \vant  it  themselves.  Per- 
haps they  thought  foreordination  hadn't  done  much  for  me, 
and  they  had  best  get  me  used  to  sulphur  gradually.  I 
remember,  however,  that,  like  the  average  case  of  matri- 
mony, it  usually  contained  a  good  deal  more  sulphur  than 
syrup. 

Matches,  we  are  told,  are  made  in  heaven;  and  I  think 
it  likely,  for  Satan  himself  is  said  to  have  originated  there. 
I'll  tell  you  how  matches  are  usually  made:  By  some  hor- 
rible accident  John  Henry  and  Sarah  Jane  become  ac- 
quainted. They  have  no  more  affinity  than  a  practical  poli- 
tician and  pure  spring  water;  but  they  dance  and  flirt,  fool 
around  the  front  gate  in  the  dark  of  the  moon,  sigh  and 
talk  nonsense.  John  Henry  begins  to  take  things  for  his 
breath  and  Sarah  Jane  for  her  complexion.  The  young 
goslings  get  wonted  to  each  other,  and  first  thing  you 
know  they're  tied  up  until  death  or  divorce  doth  them  part. 
And,  had  they  missed  each  other  altogether,  they  would 
have  been  just  as  well — perhaps  better — content  with  other 
mates  and  made  as  enthusiastic  a  failure  of  married  life. 

Most  people    marry   without    really    knowing   whether 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  311 

they're  in  love  or  not — mistake  the  gregarious  habit  for 
the  mystic  fire  of  Hymen's  torch,  the  pangs  of  a  bad  diges- 
tion for  the  barbed  arrows  from  the  love-god's  bow. 

But  when  a  couple's  really  got  what  ailed  Romeo  and 
Juliet  they're  in  no  more  doubt  about  it  than  was  the  man 
after  he  sat  down  on  the  circular  saw  to  see  if  it  was  run- 
ning and  found  it  the  sole  proprietor  of  a  South  American 
revolution.  They  don't  have  to  send  their  feelings  to  a 
chemist  for  analysis  and  classification,  nor  take  an  invoice 
of  their  affections  to  see  if  any  have  got  away.  Love  is 
really  a  very  serious  thing.  Like  sea-sickness,  everybody 
laughs  at  it  but  those  who  have  got  it.  When  Cupid  lets 
slip  a  sure-enough  shaft  it  goes  thro'  a  fellow's  heart  like 
a  Kansas  cyclone  thro*  a  colored  camp-meeting,  and  all 
the  powers  of  hades  can  never  head  it  off. 

Love  is  the  most  sacred  word  ever  framed  by  celestial 
lips.  It's  the  law  of  life,  the  harmony  of  heaven,  the  breath 
of  which  the  universe  was  born,  the  divine  essence  increate 
of  the  ever-living  God. 

But  love  is  like  all  other  sweet  things — unless  you  get 
the  very  best  brand  it  sours  awful  easy. 


Of  all  the  pitiful  Humbugs  beneath  high  heaven  com- 
mend me  to  those  intellectual  doodle-bugs  who  have  be- 
come Dame  Fashion's  devotees  and  devote  all  their  intel- 
lectuality to  the  science  of  dress — to  the  art  of  being  mis- 
erable a  la  mode.  Thousands  are  to-day  sailing  about  in 
silk  hats  who  are  guiltless  of  undershirts,  bedecked  with 
diamonds  while  in  debt  to  the  butcher  for  the  meat  on  their 
bones.  Families  that  can  scarce  afford  calico  flaunt  Paris- 
ian finery,  keep  costly  carriages  while  there's  a  chronic 
hiatus  in  their  cupboards,  go  hungry  to  bed  six  nights  in 
the  week  that  on  the  seventh  they  may  spread  a  brave  feast 
for  fashionable  fools.  God  have  mercy  on  all  such  mutton- 
heads.  They  are  the  natural  breeders  of  good-for-naughts, 
for  in  such  an  atmosphere  children  grow  up  mentally 
dwarfed  and  morally  debased. 

Fashionable  mothers  commit  their  children  to  the  care 
of  serving-maids  while  they  sail  out  to  soirees  and  recep- 
tion s- — put  their  babes  on  a  bottle  wihile  they  swing  round 
the  social  circle.  No  wonder  their  sons  grow  up.  sapheads, 
as  destitute  of  backbone  as  a  banana,  as  deficient  in  moral 
force  as  a  firkin  of  fish.  Think  of  an  infant  Napoleon  nurs- 
ing a  rubber  nozzle,  of  rearing  a  Brutus  on  patent  baby 
food,  of  bringing  a  Hannibal  up  by  hand!  You  can't  do  it. 

Why,  if  I  had  a  woman  of  that  kind  to  wife — a  fashion- 


312  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

able  butterfly  whose  heart  was  in  her  finery  and  her  feathers ; 
who  neglected  her  home  to  train  with  a  lot  of  intellectual 
tomtits  whose  glory  was  small-talk;  who  saved  her  sweetest 
smiles  for  society  and  her  ill-temper  for  the  family  altar — 
I  say  were  I  tied  fast  to  that  kind  of  a  female,  do  you  know 
what  I'd  do?  Eh?  You  don't?  Well — neither  do  I. 

There  are  some  Humbugs,  however,  who  merit  our  re- 
spect if  not  our  reverence — men  who  are  infinitely  better 
than  they  would  have  the  world  believe.  As  the  purest 
pearl  is  encased  in  an  unseemly  shell,  so,  too,  is  many  a 
god-like  soul  enshrined  in  a  breast  of  seeming  adamant. 
Many  a  man  swears  because  he's  too  proud  to  weep,  hides 
a  quivering  soul  behind  the  cynic's  sneer,  fronts  the  world 
like  a  savage  beast  at  bay  while  his  heart's  a  fathomless 
lake  of  tears.  Tennyson  tells  us  of  a  monstrous  figure  of 
complete  steel  and  armed  cap-a-pie,  that  guarded  a  castle 
gate,  and  by  its  awful  name  and  warlike  mien  affrighted 
the  fearful  souls  of  men.  But  one  day  a  dauntless  knight 
unhorsed  it  and  clove  thro'  the  massy  helm,  when  forth 
from  the  wreck  there  came  not  a  demon  armed  with  the 
scythe  of  death,  but  a  beardless  boy  scarce  old  enough  to 
break  a  pointless  lance  upon  the  village  green.  So,  too, 
when  with  the  sword  Excalibur  of  human  sympathy  you 
shear  down  thro'  the  helm  and  harness  of  some  rough- 
spoken  man  who  seems  to  hate  all  human  kind,  youi  find 
the  soul  of  a  woman  and  the  heart  of  a  little  child. 


Even  our  religion  is  ofttimes  a  Humbug,  else  why  is  it 
that  the  good  Christian  woman — who  says  her  prayers  as 
regularly  as  she  looks  under  the  bed  for  burglars — says  to 
the  caller  whom  she  cordially  detests,  "I  am  delighted  to 
see  you;"  when  she's  wondering  why  the  meddlesome  old 
gadabout  don't  stay  at  home  when  she's  not  wanted  else- 
where? Why  is  it  that  when  a  good  brother  puts  a  five- 
dollar  bill  in  the  contribution  box  he  flashes  it  up  so  all 
may  see  the  figures,  but  when  he  drops  a  nickel  in  the 
slot  to  get  a  little  grace  he  lets  not  his  right  hand  know 
what  his  left  hand  doeth  ?  WThy  is  it  that  when  you  strike 
a  devout  deacon  for  the  loan  of  ten  dollars  he  will  swear  by 
all  the  gods  he  hasn't  got  it.  when  his  pockets  are  fairly 
bursting  with  big  bills?  If  his  religion  is  not  hypocrisy — 
if  he  is  not  a  Humbug — why  doesn't  he  tell  you  in  plain 
United  States  that  he  would  rather  have  Uncle  Sam's 
promise  to  pay  than  yours?  Oh,  people  are  becoming  such 
incorrigible  liars  that  I've  about  quit  trying  to  borrow 
money. 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  313 

Too  many  people  presume  that  they  are  full  of  the  grace 
of  God  when  they're  only  bilious;  that  they  are  pious  be- 
cause they  dislike  to  see  other  people  enjoy  themselves; 
that  they  are  Christians  because  they  conform  to  certain 
cieeds,  just  as  many  men  imagine  themselves  honest  be- 
cause they  obey  the  laws  of  the  land — for  the  purpose  of 
keeping  out  of  the  penitentiary.  They  put  up  long  prayers 
on  Sunday;  that's  piety.  They  bamboozle  a  green  gosling 
out  of  his  birthright  on  Monday;  that's  business.  They 
have  one  face  with  which  to  confront  the  Lord  and  another 
with  which  to  beguile  their  brethren.  They  even  acquire 
two  voices — a  brisk  business  accent  and  a  Sunday  whine 
that  would  make  a  cub  wolf  climb  a  tree.  I  am  always 
suspicious  of  a  man's  piety  when  it  makes  him  look  as  tho' 
he  had  cut  a  tihroat  or  scuttled  a  ship  and  was  praying  for 
a  commutation  of  the  death  sentence.  I  could  never  under- 
stand why  a  man  who  can  read  his  title  clear  to  mansions 
in  the  skies — who  holds  a  lien  on  a  corner  lot  in  the  New 
Jerusalem — should  allow  that  fact  to  hurt  him. 

I  have  great  respect  for  true  religion;  but  for  the  brand 
of  holiness  that's  put  on  with  the  Sunday  shirt — that  makes 
a  man  cry  ahmen  with  unction,  but  doesn't  prevent  him 
selling  5  and  lO-cent  cigars  out  of  the  same  box,  oleomar- 
garine and  creamery  butter  out  of  the  same  bucket,  benzine 
and  bourbon  whiskey  out  of  the  same  barrel;  which  makes 
long  prayers  on  Sunday  and  gives  short  weights  on  Mon- 
day; which  worries  over  the  welfare  of  good-looking  young 
women,  but  gives  the  old  grandames  the  go-by;  which 
fathers  the  orphan  only  if  he's  rich  and  husbands  the  widow 
only  if  she's  -handsome — for  that  kind  of  Christianity  I 
have  no  more  use  than  for  a  mugwump  governor  who 
saddles  his  state  with  the  expense  of  a  legislative  session 
to  gratify  a  private  grudge  against  a  brother  gambler. 

That  religion  which  sits  up  o'nights  to  agonize  because 
a  few  naked  niggers  in  equatorial  Africa  never  heard  Eve's 
snake  story,  how  Job  scratched  himself  with  a  broken  pie- 
plate  or  the  hog  happened  to  be  so  full  of  the  spirit  of 
hades;  that  robs  childhood  of  its  pennies  to  send  prayer- 
books  to  people  whose  redemption  should  begin  with  a 
bath,  while  in  our  own  country  every  town  from  Catta- 
raugus  to  Kalamazoo — every  city  from  the  Arctic  ocean  to 
the  Austral  sea — is  overrun  with  heathen  who  know  naught 
of  the  grace  of  God  or  the  mystery  of  a  square  meal;  who 
prowl  in  the  very  shadow  of  our  temples  of  justice,  build 
their  lairs  in  proximity  to  pur  public  schools  and  within 
sound  of  the  collect  of  our  churches,  is  an  arrant  Humbug, 


314  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

a  crime  against  man,  an  offense  to   God,  a  curse  to  the 
world. 


People  frequently  say  to  me,  "Brann,  your  attacks  are 
too  harsh.  You  should  use  more  persuasion  and  less 
pizen."  Perhaps  so;  but  I  have  not  yet  mastered  the 
esoteric  of  choking  a  bad  dog  to  death  with  good  butter. 
Persuasion  is  well  enough  if  you're  acourting — or  in  the 
hands  of  the  vigilantes ;  but  turning  it  loose  on  the  average 
fraud  were  too  much  like  a  tenderfoot  trying  to  move  a 
string  of  freight  steers  with  moral  suasion.  He  takes  up 
his  whip,  gently  snaps  it  as  iho'  he  feared  it  were  loaded, 
and  talks  to  his  cattle  like  a  Boston  philanthropist  or  a 
poor  relation.  The  steers  look  round  at  him,  wonder,  in  a 
vague  way,  if  he's  worth  eating,  and  stand  at  ease.  An 
old  freighter  who's  been  over  the  "divide"  and  got  his 
profanity  down  to  a  fine  art,  grabs  that  goad,  cracks  it 
like  a  rifled  cannon  reaching  for  a  raw  recruit  and  spills 
a  string  of  cuss  words  calculated  to  precipitate  the  final 
conflagration.  You  expect  to  see  him  struck  dead — but 
those  steers  don't.  They're  firmly  persuaded  that  he's  going 
to  outlive  'em  if  they  don't  get  down  and  paw  gravel,  and 
they  get  a  Nancy  Hanks  hustle  on  'em.  Never^attempt  to 
move  an  ox-team  with  moral  suasion,  or  to  drown  the 
cohorts  of  the  devil  in  the  milk  of  human  kindness.  It  won't 
work. 


Oh,  it's  possible  that  you  may  disagree  with  me  on  some 
minor  points  of  doctrine.  That's  your  blessed  privilege  and 
I  wouldn't  deprive  you  of  it  if  I  had  the  power.  A  pompous 
old  fellow  once  called  at  the  office  of  my  religious  monthly 
to  inform  me  that  I  was  radically  wrong  on  every  possible 
public  question.  He  seemed  to  think  that  I  had  committed 
an  unpardonable  crime  in  daring  to  differ  with  him.  I  asked 
him  to  be  seated  and  whistled  for  the  devil — the  printer's 
devil,  the  only  kind  we  keep  in  the  office  of  the  Iconoclast. 
I  told  him  to  procure  for  me  a  six-shooter,  a  sledge  hammer 
and  a  boat.  My  visitor  became  greatly  alarmed. 

"Wh-what  are  you  g-going  to  d-do?" 

"Do?"  I  replied.  "I'm  going  to  shoot  the  printers, 
smash  the  press  and  throw  the  type  into  the  river.  What 
in  the  name  of  the  great  Sanhedrim,  is  the  use  o'  me  print- 
ing a  paper  if  I  can't  please  you?" 

Mr.  Pomposity  subsided  somewhat,  and  I  proceeded  to 
talk  United  States  to  him. 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  315 

"You  say  I'm  wrong.  Perhaps  I  am;  but  how  in  Hal- 
ifax"— I  think  I  said  Halifax ;  anyhow  "we'll  let  it  go  at  that 
—"how  in  Halifax  did  you  find  it  out?  Who  installed  you 
as  infallible  pope  in  the  realm  of  intellect  and  declared  it 
rank  folly  to  run  counter  to  the  ideas  that  roost  in  your  nice 
fat  head?" 

He  was  one  of  those  egotistical  mental  microbes  or  intel- 
lectual animalctilae  who  imagine  that  a  man  must  be  in  the 
wrong  if  he  disagrees  with  them.  And  the  woods  are  so 
full  of  that  class  of  fellows  that  the  fool-killer  has  become 
discouraged  and  jumped  his  job. 

Those  who  chance  to  think  alike  get  together  and  form 
a  political  party,  a  society  or  a  sect  and  take  it  for  granted 
that  they've  got  all  the  wisdom  of  the  world  grabbed — that 
beyond  their  little  Rhode  Island  of  intellect  are  only  gibber- 
ing idiots  and  plotting  knaves.  When  a  man  fears  to  sub- 
ject his  faith  to  the  crucible  of  controversy;  when  he  de- 
clines to  submit  his  ideas  to  the  ballistae  and  battering- 
rams  of  cold  logic,  you  can  safely  set  it  down  that  he's 
either  a  hopeless  cabbage-head  or  a  hypocritical  Humbug 
— that  he's  a  fool  or  a  fraud,  is  full  of  buncombe  or  bile. 

It  is  a  difference  of  opinion  that  keeps  the  world  from 
going  to  the  dogs.  Independence  of  thought,  doubt  of 
accepted  dogmas,  the  spirit  of  inquiry — the  desire  to  know 
— is  the  mighty  lever  that  has  lifted  man  so  far  above  the 
brute  level  that  he  has  begun  to  claim  kinship  with  the 
Creator.  Yet  we  say  to  our  brother,  "Thou  fool,"  because 
he  takes  issue  with  us  on  the  tariff,  or  the  proper  time  in 
the  moon  to  plant  post-holes — even  insist  on  sending  peo- 
ple to  perdition  who  cannot  see  "the  plan  of  salvation"  thro' 
our  little  sectarian  telescope. 

Men  of  a  mind  flock  together  just  like  so  many  gab- 
bling geese,  or  other  foolish  fowl  of  a  feather,  each  group 
waddling  in  the  wake  of  some  flat-headed  old  gander, 
squawking  when  he  squawks  and  fluttering  when  he  flieji. 
Because  I  decline  to  get  in  among  the  goslings  and  be 
piloted  about  the  intellectual  goose-pond,  I'm  told  that  I 
have  no  policy.  Well,  I  hope  I  haven't.  If  I  thought  I  had 
I'd  take  something  for  it,  dontcherknow !  When  I  cannot 
live  among  my  fellows  without  surrendering  my  independ- 
ence—forswearing freedom  of  speech  and  liberty  of 
thought ;  without  having  to  play  the  canting  hypocrite  or  go 
hungry — to  fawn  like  a  flea-bitten  fice  to  win  public  favor — 
I'll  make  me  a  suit  of  leather,  take  to  the  woods *and  chop  bee 
trees.  I'd  rather  my  babes  were  born  in  a  cane-brake  and 
reared  on  bark  and  wild  berries,  with  the  blood  of  independ- 


316  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

ence  burning  in  their  veins,  than  spawned  in  a  palace  and 
brought  up  boot-licks  and  policy  players. 


I  am  sometimes  inclined  to  believe  that  Life  itself  is  a 
Humbug — that  the  man  who  makes  the  best  of  it  is  the 
one  who  escaped  being  born.  We  know  not  whence  we 
came  or  v/hat  for,  whither  we  go  or  what  we'll  do  when 
we  get  there.  True  it  is  that  life  is  not  altogether  labor  and 
lees — there's  some  skittles  and  beer;  but  the  most  of  us 
get  more  shadow  than  sunshine,  more  cholera-morbus  than 
cream.  Man  born  of  woman  is  of  few  days  and  full  of 
politics.  The  moment  he  hits  the  globe  he  starts  for  the 
grave,  and  his  only  visible  reward  for  long  days  of  labor 
and  nights  of  pain  is  an  epitaph  he  can't  read  and  a  tom'b- 
stone  he  don't  want.  In  the  first  of  the  Seven  Ages  of  man 
he's  licked,  in  the  last  he's  neglected,  and  in  all  the  others 
he's  a  fair  mark  for  the  shafts  of  falsehood.  If  the  don't 
marry  his  first  love,  he's  forever  miserable,  and  if  he  does, 
he  wishes  he  were  dead.  By  the  time  he  has  learned  wis- 
dom he  leaves  the  world,  is  hustled  into  a  hell  of  fire  or  an 
orthodox  heaven,  and  for  forty  years  I've  been  trying  to 
figure  out  which  of  these  appalling  evils  to  avoid.  In  one 
place  the  climate  is  hot  and  unhealthy,  in  the  other  the 
inhabitants  never  entertained  an  original  idea — believed 
everything  they  were  told.  Think  of  having  to  live  thro' 
all  eternity  with  the  strictly  orthodox — people  who  regard 
freedom  of  thought  as  foul  blasphemy,  millions  of  immacu- 
late bricks  cast  in  the  same  mould!  No  wonder  there's 
neither  marrying  nor  giving  in  marriage  in  heaven.  Just 
imagine  a  couple  of  love-sick  loons  having  nothing  to  do 
but  spoon  from  everlasting  to  everlasting,  to  talk  tutti- 
frutti  thro'  all  eternity — never  a  break  or  breathing  spell 
in  the  lingering  sweetness  long  drawn  out!  Amelia  Rives 
Chanler  or  Ella  Wheeler  Wrilcox  couldn't  stand  it.  Nor 
could  I.  By  the  time  I  had  lived  ten  thousand  years  with 
a  female  w,ho  could  fly,  and  had  nothing  in  God's  world 
to  do  but  watch  me,  I'd  either  raise  a  revolution  or  send 
in  my  resignation.  It  is  said  that  Satan  had  an  affaire 
d'amour  while  he  was  playing  Seraph.  If  the  object  of  his 
affections  wore  feathers  I  don't  much  wonder  that  he  went 
over  the  garden  wall. 

I  suspect  that  the  orthodox  heaven  and  hell,  of  which 
we  hear  so  much,  are  Humbugs.  I  should  know  something 
of  those  interesting  ultimates — be  qualified  to  speak  ex 
cathedra — for  a  doctor  of  divinity  recently  denounced  me 
as  a  child  of  the  devil.  In  that  case  you  behold  in  me  a 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  317 

prince  imperial,  heir-apparent  to  the  throne  of  Pluto,  the 
potential  master  of  more  than  a,  moiety  of  .mankind.  But 
don't  tell  anybody  that  I've  got  a  title,  that  I  belong  to 
the  oldest  nobility,  or  all  the  Goulderbilts  will  be  trying  to 
buy  me. 

I  promise  you  that  when  I  come  into  my  kingdom/  I'll 
devise  a  worse  punishment  than  physical  pain.  A  soul  is 
an  immaterial  thing.  You  cannot  flay  it  with  aspic's  fangs 
nor  kerosene  it  and  set  it  on  fire.  A  material  hell  for  im- 
material mind  were  too  ridiculous  for  a  progressive  devil. 
But  it  is  not  necessary  to  be  a  son  of  Satan  to  build  a  hell 
in  which  demons  dance  and  sulphur-fumes  asphyxiate  the 
soul.  You  may  transform  your  own  home  into  a  valley 
of  Hinnom,  a  veritable  Gehenna;  or  you  may  make  of  the 
humblest  cot  a  heaven,  illumed  by  love  and  gilded  with 
God's  own  glory — a  Beulah  land  where  flowers  forever 
bloom,  where  perfumed  censors  swing  and  musi'c  throbs 
and  thrills  sweeter  far  than  Orphean  lyre  or  song  of  Isra- 
feel. 

The  orthodox  heaven  is  a  pageant  of  barbaric  splendor, 
of  gaudy  tinsel  and  flaming  gold  to  dazzle  the  eyes  of  in- 
fants. It  is  a  land  of  lotus-eaters,  where  ambition's  star  is 
blotted  from  the  firmament  and  the  wild  ecstacy  of  passion 
beats  no  longer  in  the  blood;  an  Oriental  heaven,  a  Para- 
dise for  tired  people — eternal  dolce  far.  nlente  for  niggers 
and  yaller  dogs.  No  Celt  or  Saxon  with  aspiring  mind, 
with  swelling  muscles  and  heart  that  flames  with  the  fierce 
joy  of  strong  endeavor,  that  thrills  with  the  sweetness  of 
sacrifice  for  others'  sake  that  swells  with  the  mad  glory  of 
triumph  in  the  forum  or  the  field,  could  have  conceived 
such  a  futile  farce. 

Give  me  a  land  whose  skies  are  lead  and  soil  is  sand,  yet 
everlasting  life  with  those  I  love;  give  me  a  lodge  in  some 
vast  wilderness  hallowed  by  children's  laughter;  give  me 
a  cave  in  the  mountain  crag  to  house  those  dearest  to  my 
heart;  give  me  a  tent  on  the  far  frontier,  where,  by  the 
lambent  light  of  their  mother's  eyes,  I  may  watch  my  chil- 
dren grow  in  grace  and  the  truth  of  God,  and  I'll  build 
a  heaven  grander,  nobler,  sweeter  than  was  ever  dreamed 
of  by  the  gross  materialists  of  bygone  days. 


Life  is  a  Humbug  only  because  we  make  it  so.  We  are 
frauds  because  we  are  fools.  This  is  a  beautiful,  a  glorious 
world,  fit  habitation  for  sons  of  the  Most  High  God.  It 
is  a  fruitful  mother  at  whose  fair  breast  all  her  children 
may  be  filled.  There  should  be  never  a  Humbug  nor  a 


318  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

hypocrite,  never  a  millionaire  nor  a  mendicant  on  the  great 
round  globe.  Labor  should  be  but  healthful  exercise  to 
develop  the  physical  man — to  furnish  forth  a  fitting  casket 
for  the  godlike  mind,  appropriate  setting  for  the  immortal 
soul.  The  curse  of  life  arises  from  a  misconception  of  its 
significance.  We  delve  in  the  mine  for  paltry  gems,  ex- 
plore old  ocean's  deep  for  pearls;  we  toil  and  strive  for  gold 
until  the  hands  are  worn  and  the  heart  is  cold;  we  attire 
ourselves  in  Tyrean  purples  and  silks  of  Ind  and  strut 
forth  in  our  gilded  frippery  on  the  narrow  bridge  of  time, 
between  the  two  eternities ;  we  despoil  the  thin  purse  of  the 
poor  to  erect  brazen  altars  and  priceless  fanes,  when  the 
whole  earth's  a  sacred  shrine,  the  universe  a  temple  thro' 
which  rings  tihe  voice  of  God  and  rolls  the  eternal  melody 
of  the  spheres. 


Perhaps  it  is  unnecessary  to  state  that  I'm  not  posing 
as  a  saint.  I  may  eventually  become  an  angel — ctf  some 
sort — but  I'll  wear  no  wings.  We  are  accustomed  to  think 
of  seraphs  flying  from  heaven  to  earth,  flitting  from  star  to 
star — irrespective  of  the  fact  that  feathers  are  useless  where 
there's  no  atmosphere.  An  angel  working  his  wings  to 
propel  himself  thro'  a  vacuum  were  as  ridiculous  as  a  dis- 
embodied spirit  riding  a  bike  down  a  rainbow. 

I  do  not  expect  to  reform  all  Humbugs,  to  banish  all 
Fakes,  to  exterminate  all  Folly.  If  the  world  should  get 
too  good,  I  might  have  to  hunt  another  home.  I  can  un- 
derstand every  crime  in  the  calendar  but  the  crime  of  greed, 
every  lust  of  the  flesh  but  the  lust  for  gain,  every  sin  that 
ever  damned  a  soul  but  the  sin  of  selfishness.  By  all  the 
sacred  bugs  and  beasts  of  ancient  Egypt,  I'd  rather  be  a 
witch's  cat — or  even  a  politician — and  howl  in  sympathy 
with  my  tribe;  I'd  rather  be  a  tramp  and  divide  my  hand- 
outs with  one  more  hungry;  I'd  rather  be  a  mangy  yellow 
dog  without  a  master  and  keep  the  company  of  my  kind, 
than  to  be  a  multi-millionaire,  with  the  blood  of  a  snake, 
the  heart  of  a  beast,  and  carry  my  soul,  like  Pedro  Garcia, 
in  my  purse. 

When  I  think  of  the  three  thousand  children  in  the  sin- 
gle city  of  Chicago  without  rags  to  shield  their  nakedness 
from  the  keen  north  wind;  of  the  ten  thousand  innocents, 
such  as  Christ  blessed,  who  died  in  New  York  every  year 
of  the  world  for  lack  of  food;  of  the  millions  in  every  coun- 
try whose  cries  go  up  night  and  day  to  God's  great  throne 
—not  for  salvation,  but  for  soup;  not  for  the  robe  of  right- 
eousness, but  for  a  second-hand  pair  of  pants — and  then 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  319 

contemplate  those  beside  whose  hoarded  wealth  the  riches 
of  Lydia's  ancient  kings  were  but  a  beggar's  patrimony, 
praying  to  Him  who  reversed  the  law  of  nature  to  feed 
the  poor,  I  long  for  the  mystic  power  to  coin  sentences 
that  sear  like  sulphur-flames  come  hot  from  hell,  and  weave 
of  words  a  whip  of  scorpions  to  lash  the  rascals  naked  thra 
the  world. 

We  humbug  our  parents,  the  public,  and  then,  as  far  as 
possible,  our  wives;  tho'  the  latter  are  seldom  so  blind  as 
they  seem.  The  wife  wiho  cannot  tell  when  her  lord  and 
master  is  lying — whether  he's  been  sitting  up  with  a  sick 
friend  or  nursing  a  Robert-tail  flush — well,  she  must  be 
the  newest  kind  of  a  "New  Woman,"'  with  a  brain  built  for 
bloomers  and  bike.  The  New  Woman  is — she  is  all  right; 
just  the  Old  Woman  in  disguise,  a  paradox  and  a  coat  of 
paint. 

Whenever  I  tackle  this  subject  I'm  reminded  of  a  broth 
of  a  boy  wiho  in  days  agone  drove  the  team  afield  on  my 
father's  farm.  One  rare  June  day,  when  the  sun  was  slowly 
sinking  in  the  -west,  as  the  novelists  say — and  I  believe 
that's  where  Old  Sol  usually  sinks — he  got  mixed  up  with 
a  bevy  of  industrious  bumble-bees  who  were  no  respecters 
of  persons — would  sting  an  honest  delver  as  quickly  as 
they'd  put  the  gaffles  to  a  scorbutic  duke.  In  about  two 
minutes  Mike  came  over  the  hill  a-w)hooping  like  a  segment 
of  the  Southern  Confederacy  reaching  for  a  nigger  regi- 
ment, his  head  the  size  and  shape  of  a  red  peck  measure 
that  had  been  kicked  by  a  roan  mule. 

"Sure,  now,  they  didn't  do  a  thing  t'  me,"  he  said.  "An 
ould  bumblebug  came  a  bizzin'  an'  a  buzzin'  aluken  fer  all 
the  wurruld  like  an'  Orangeman  wid  wings,  so  I  up  an' 
hit  him  a  biff.  Thin  all  the  'rist  av  the  haythen  tuk  up  his 
foight — an'  Oi  kem  home." 

Hit  one  Humbug  and  every  Fraud  and  Fake  in  Chris- 
tendom is  ready  for  the  fray.  They  attempt  to  crush  their 
critic  with  calumny,  to  defeat  him  with  falsehood.  When 
you  hear  a  fellow  railing  at  the  Iconoclast,  just  look 
through  its  stock  of  caps  and  you'll  find  one  that  will  fit  the 
knot  on  the  end  of  his  neck. 

Truth  and  only  truth  is  eternal.  It  was  not  born  and 
it  cannot  die.  It  may  be  obscured  by  the  clouds  of  false- 
hood, or  buried  in  the  debris  of  brutish  ignorance,  but  it 
can  never  be  destroyed.  It  exists  in  every  atom,  lives  in 
every  flower  and  flames  in  every  star.  When  the  heavens 
and  the  earth  shall  pass  away  and  the  universe  return  to 
cosmic  dust,  divine  truth  will  stand  unscathed  amid  the 
crash  of  matter  and  the  wreck  of  worlds. 


320  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST   ' 

Falsehood  is  an  amorphous  monster,  conceived  in  the 
brain  of  knaves  and  brought  forth  by  the  breath  of  fools. 
It's  a  moral  pestilence,  a  miasmic  vapor  that  passes,  like 
a  blast  from  hell,  over  the  face  of  the  world  and  is  gone 
forever.  It  may  leave  death  in  its  wake  and  disaster  dire; 
it  may  place  on  the  brow  of  purity  the  brand  of  the  cour- 
tesan and  cover  the  hero  with  the  stigma  of  the  coward; 
it  may  wreck  hopes  and  ruin  homes,  cause  blood  to  flow 
and  hearts  to  break ;  it  may  pollute  the  altar  and  disgrace 
the  throne,  corrupt  the  courts  and  curse  the  land,  but  the 
lie  cannot  live  forever,  and  when  it's  dead  and  damned 
there's  none  so  poor  as  to  do  it  reverence. 


THE  TEIXEIRA-MORRIS  CASE. 

H.  Steen  Morris,  a  young  man  who  parts  his  name  on 
the  side,  was  tried  in  this  city  a  few  days  ago  on  the  charge 
of  raping  Antonia  Teixeira,  the  "ward  of  the  Baptist 
church,"  while  she  was  being  "educated"  at  Baylor  Uni- 
versity for  missionary  work  among  the  "heathen"  Cath- 
olics of  Brazil.  All  the  influence  of  Baylor  was  brought  to 
bear  in  favor  of  the  man  accused  of  invading  jts  supposed 
sacred  precincts  to  feed  his  unholy  lust  by  the  debauch- 
ment  of  a  babe.  As  the  Baptists  are  all-powerful  in  this 
county,  and  can  easily  make  or  break  any  man  engaged  in 
a  purely  local  business,  his  acquittal  seemed  a  foregone 
conclusion.  No  wonder  the  president  of  Baylor  gleefully 
rubbed  his.  hands  and  predicted  that  the  alleged  rape-fiend 
"would  have  easy  rolling,"  for  to  oppose  the  wishes  of  the 
Baptist  bosses  were  to  court  a  social,  political  and  business 
boycott  by  those  who  boast  that  their  cult  holds  a  copy- 
right on  freedom  of  conscience.  Yes,  Steen  was  to  have 
"easy  rolling";  and  when  the  jury  dismissed  him  with  a 
certificate  of  good  moral  character,  Dr.  Burleson  was  go- 
ing to  sue  the  Iconoclast  for  damages — in  the  sum  of  'steen 
million  dollars  I  s'pose.  That's  what  he  said — but  he  didn't 
expect  that  his  rallikaboo  bluff  would  ever  come  to  the 
ears  of  the  Icon.  For  nearly  a  year  now  Dr.  Burleson  has 
been  assuring  doting  parents  with  young  daughters  to 
educate  that  he  was  just  about  to  begin  to  commence  to  do 
something  awfully  dreadful  to  this  great  religious  journal ; 
but  his  horrid  vengeance — like  some  other  things — is  "all 
in  his  head."  Just  how  much  of  the  Apostle's  wealth  Bay- 
lor University  wants — how  many  golden  guineas  it  will  re- 
quire to  heal  the  hurt  that  honor  feels — I  do  not  know ;  but 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  .          321 

I'm  convinced  that  when  he's  jumped  up  by  Baylor  before  a 
jury  of  his  peers  to  demonstrate  his  right,  as  an  American 
sovereign,  to  denounce  a  damnable  crime  against  the  in- 
nocence of  childhood  by  super-sanctified  hypocrites,  tum- 
ble-bugs will  give  milk  and  frogs  will  grow  feathers.  "Con- 
science doth  make  cowards  of  us  all."  Baylor  will  carefully 
lock  the  closet  in  which  it  keeps  its  interesting  collection 
of  skeletons,  and  refrain  from  blowing  in  the  Apostle  to 
see  if  he  is  loaded.  That's  what  I  said. 

To  make  assurance  of  "easy  rolling"  doubly  sure,  those 
especially  interested  in  securing  the  acquittal  of  the  accused, 
went  to  the  friends  and  temporary  guardians  of  the  ruined 
girl  and  requested  them  to  use  their  influence  to  secure  a 
withdrawal  of  the  charge  that  force  was  employed  to  accom- 
plish her  disgrace.  As  her  ruin  was  wrought  before  the  new 
law,  raising  the  age  of  consent  from  twelve  to  fifteen  years, 
went  into  effect,  it  was  really  an  attempt,  by  bringing  undue 
influence  to  bear  on  the  plaintiff,  to  get  her  case  dismissed 
while  convicting  her  of  perjury.  But  her  friends  declined 
to  further  the  fraud  and  Antonia  stuck  to  her  original  story 
— that  she  had  been  dragged  from  Dr.  Burleson's  kitchen 
by  the  defendant  and  forcibly  debauched  within  the  very 
shadow  of  Baylor.  Rev.  Zachariah  C.  Taylor  and  Dr.  Rufus 
C.  Burleson  are  two  of  the  pious  brethren  who  thus  at- 
tempted to  get  Antonia  to  alter  her  testimony.  The  aged 
president  admitted  as  much  in  court;  but  protested  that  he 
"didn't  want  her  to  swear  to  a  falsehood."  If  he  wanted 
her  to  swear  only  to  the  truth  why  did  he  go  to  such  pains 
to  alter  her  testimony?  Certainly  she  knew  better  what 
accorded  with  the  facts  than  he  possibly  could.  I  much 
fear  that  he  is  one  of  those  "wily  Jesuits"  who,  we  are  asked 
to  believe,  can  lie  in  sixteen  languages  and  still  avoid  the 
commission  of  a  cardinal  sin. 

When  the  case  was  submitted  to  the  jury  it  developed 
that  the  defendant  did  not  have  such  "easy  rolling"  as  the 
eminent  divine  had  predicted.  Seven  of  the  jurors  were,  not 
willing  to  turn  him  loose  even  to  please  the  dominant  polit- 
ical power,  while  the  remaining  five  could  not  quite  make  up 
their  minds  that  it  was  proper  to  put  the  brother  of  Dr. 
Burleson's  pious  son-in-law  in  the  penitentiary.  So  the 
case  goes  over  to  the  next  term  of  court — while  the  Bay- 
lorians  redouble  their  efforts  to  get  the  plaintiff  out  of  the 
country.  Rev.  Zachariah  C.  Taylor,  who  brought  Antonia 
to  Texas  as  a  companion  to  his  wife,  and  afterwards  wrote 
an  article  for  a  Waco  daily — which  the  steering  committee 
wisely  withdrew — protesting  that  he  knew  at  the  time  that 
she  was  a  foul  prostitute,  is  back  in  Brazil  writing  letters 


322  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

imploring  her  to  return  to  her  kith  and  kin  in  that  faraway 
country.  Why?  He  declared  while  here  that  her  mother 
was  a  courtesan  and  all  her  relatives  a  very  bad  lot.  Why 
should  the  poor  girl  return  to  such  immoral  surrounding? 
— after  enjoying  for  three  years  the  elevating  influence  of 
Baylor  University?  Does  he  consider  that  her  "education" 
is  complete — that  illegitimate  childbirth  constitutes  Baylor's 
graduating  exercises — and  that  she  should  enter  at  once 
upon  the  work  of  converting  the  Brazilian  Catholics?  Or 
does  he  want  her  to  resume  her  duties  as  companion  to  his 
wife?  I  do  not  quite  understand  this  good  man  Taylor. 
When  he  brought  Antonia  here  he  gave  her  a  certificate 
of  good  character.  When  her  downfall  casts  a  shadow 
over  the  great  Baptist  University  he  declared  that  she  had 
been  bad  from  babyhood,  and,  that,  knowing  this,  he  first 
made  her  an  inmate  of  his  family,  then  consigned  her  to 
the  companionship  of  scores  of  pure  young  girls,  well  know- 
ing— if  he  knows  anything — that  one  wanton  can  work  more 
mischief  among  innocent  maids  than  can  a  dozen  men. 
Then  he  visited  her  at  her  present  home  to  discuss  the 
situation,  but  declined  to  be  left  alone  with  her,  fearing 
that  his  morals  might  become  contaminated.  Like  Joseph, 
he  was  ready  to  fly  to  avoid  being  ravished — after  keeping 
her  in  his  household  for  years  with  full  knowledge  that  she 
was  a  courtesan !  I  much  fear  that  Rev.  Zachariah  would 
be  a  first-class  fraud  if  God  hadn't  intended  him  for  a  fool. 

It  has  been  nearly  a  year  since  H.  Steen  Morris  was 
arrested  for  the  ravishment  of  Antonia  Teixeira.  The  Icon- 
oclast gave  it  a  little  attention  at  the  time ;  but  as  a  dozen  or 
two  people  have  subscribed  since  then,  it  may  not  be  amiss 
to  briefly  summarize  the  celebrated  case,  that  new  patrons 
of  the  paper  may  become  familiar  with  this  crowning  infamy 
of  the  age  and  know  what  to  expect  should  they  choose  to 
commit  their  children  to  the  care  of  the  great  Baptist  sanc- 
tuary of  the  South. 

About  four  years  ago  Rev.  Zachariah  C.  Taylor  returned 
from  Brazil,  where  lie  had  been  frying  to  convert  the 
"heathen,"  alias  the  Catholics.  While  in  Brazil,  he  resided 
in  the  same  house  with  a  widow  whom  he  now  declares 
was  a  bawd.  Whether  her  immorality  induced  the  reverend 
gentleman  to  make  her  house  his  habitat,  I  do  not  know. 
He  may  have  considered  that  her  adherence  to  the  Baptist 
faith  excused  her  sexual  frailties,  if  it  did  not  sanctify  them, 
for  he  persuaded  her  to  allow  her  little  daughter  to  accom- 
pany him  to  Texas  "to  be  educated  for  missionary  work  in 
Brazil."  The  Baptists  here  made  a  great  hullabaloo  over 
her  as  a  brand  snatched  from  the  burning — representing  the 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  323 

cumulative  result  of  the  long  and  arduous  labors  of  their 
missionary  in  a  "heathen"  land — and  formally  adopted  her 
as  the  "ward"  of  that  sanctified  organization.  She  was  a 
frail  little  thing,  about  eleven  years  old,  but  small  for  her 
age  and  possessed  average  intelligence.  She  was  committed 
to  the  care  of  President  Burleson  of  Baylor  with  the  under- 
standing that,  after  five  years  of  careful  schooling,  she 
should  return  to  Brazil  and  explain  the  heavenly  water- 
route  to  her  benighted  Catholic  brethren.  Instead  of  being 
sent  to  the  class-room,  however,  she  was  relegated  to  the 
Burleson  kitchen,  where  she  served  in  the  capacity  of  under- 
servant.  About  three  years  later — or  when  she  was  fourteen 
years  old — it  was  discovered  that  her  clothes  didn't  fit  her. 
That  was  not  considered  very  remarkable,  for  such  things 
had  happened  before  at  Baylor.  It  would  cost  considerable 
money  to  send  her  home,  and  of  course  it  would  never  do 
to  let  her  be  confined  at  the  university — that  were  contrary 
to  the  Baylorian  customs  in  such  cases ;  so  the  Burlesons 
and  Morrises  began  casting  about  for  other  accommodations 
— a  kind  of  private  lying-in  hospital  where  the  babe  could  be 
born  without  attracting  the  attention  of  the  general  public 
and  frightening  away  good  paying  patrons.  By  repre- 
senting Antonia  as  "a  girl  deserving  sympathy  rather  than 
condemnation,"  "a  child  we  are  so  sorry  for" — a  girl 
"faithful  and  honest" — a  poor  Catholic  woman  was  induced 
to  give  the  embryo  missionary  to  the  Popish  heathen  a 
home  and  minister  to  her  in  her  misfortune.  Despite  all 
precautions,  however,  rumors  of  the  affair  got  afloat  and  a 
nervy  justice  of  the  peace,  without  the  fear  of  the  Baylorians 
before  his  eyes,  proceeded  to  investigate  the  matter.  The 
story  of  the  child  was  so  plain  and  straightforward  that 
it  was  accepted  as  true  by  the  public.  She  stated,  albeit 
with  great  reluctance,  that  H.  Steen  Morris,  a  young  man 
who  appears  to  have  had  the  run  of  the  Baylor  preserves, 
solicited  her  .favors  and,  being  refused,  ravished  her  per- 
son ;  that  she  had  made  frequent  complaints  to  the  Bur- 
lesons;  "but  nothing  was  done  about  it;"  that  when  her 
condition  could  no  longer  be  concealed,  Rev.  S.  L.  Morris, 
son-in-law  to  Dr.  Burleson  and  brother  to  her  assailant, 
had  tried  to  bulldoze  her  into  a  confession  that  she  was 
enciente  by  a  "coon."  The  remarkable  fact  developed  at 
the  preliminary  trial  that  altho'  three  years  an  inmate  of 
Baylor — being  educated  with  a  special  view  to  the  conver- 
sion of  Catholics — she  knew  almost  nothing — not  even  the 
tenets  of  the  Baptist  faith,  or  that  the  ravishment  of  a  maid 
was  an  offense  against  the  laws  of  this  Christian  land ! 
It  was  then  that  Rev.  Zachariah  C.  Taylor  came  to  the 


324  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

front  with  his  remarkable  story  anent  the  immorality  of  his 
Brazilian  landlady  and  the  companion  he  had  selected  for 
his  "wife  with  such  care.  It  was  then  that  the  Burlesons 
discovered  that  Antonia  was  a  born  thief  instead  of  an 
honest  and  faithful  child  who  had  met  with  a  grievous  mis- 
fortune. It  was  then  that  the  reverend  president  of  Baylor 
rushed  into  print  with  a  screed  branding1  as  little  better  than 
a  public  bawd  a  child  in  short  dresses,  who  to  this  day  refers 
to  him  as  "gran'pa !"  It  was  then  that  the  Catholic  woman 
who  had  assumed  the  care  of  a  girl  ravished  at  Dr.  Bur- 
leson's  door,  was  besought  to  turn  her  adrift — to  send  her 
to  the  home  for  fallen  women  at  Fort  Worth !  It  was  then 
that  all  the  power  of  Baylor  was  exerted,  not  to  ferret  out 
the  criminal  and  bring  him  to  the  bar,  but  to  forever  blacken 
the  character  of  the  little  orphan  and  shield  the  alleged 
author  of  her  shame. 

And  it  was  then — by  the  eternal  gods! — that  the  Icon- 
oclast aligned  its  guns. 

Antonia's  babe  was  born — three  pounds — white.  It  lived 
just  long  enough  to  develop  a  striking  resemblance  to  H. 
Steen  Morris ;  but  of  course  this  may  have  been  a  remark- 
able coincidence.  It  died,  and  was  buried  at  the  cost  of  the 
poor  people  who  had  cared  for  its  mother  when  deserted 
by  her  contemptible  alma  mater.  The  Iconoclast  stated  at 
the  time  that  it  was  buried  in  a  pauper's  grave — and  I'm 
told  it  is  upon  this  inaccuracy  that  Dr.  Burleson  hangs  his 
slender  hope  of  catching  me  for  a  few  mental  anguish  plas- 
ters. It  would  have  been  buried  in  the  Potter's  Field  had 
the  poor  people  depended  upon  Baylor  University  to  defray 
its  funeral  expenses.  Its  mother  might  have  died  in  the 
throes  of  maternity  had  they  relied  upon  the  Burlesons- 
and  the  Morrises  to  provide  medical  aid.  The  men  about 
town— Catholics,  Jews  and  Atheists — paid  the  doctor's  bill, 
while  the  sainted  Baylorians  closed  their  purses  and  sighed 
for  the  wickedness  of  this  world.  The  Catholic  woman 
who  played  a  mother's  part  to  the  poor  victim  of  anti-Cath- 
olic missionary  education,  assures  me  that  all  the  aid  sent 
by  the  sanctified  was  six  bits  in  cash  and  an  old  chemise 
— royal  beneficence  which  was  declined  with  scant  courtesy. 

Instead  of  seeking  refuge  in  the  "Reservation" — whither 
she  would  certainly  have  drifted  had  she  been  so  "crazy 
after  the  boys"  as  Dr.  Burleson  asserts,  or  so  abandoned 
as  Rev.  Taylor  tried  to  testify  when  the  steering  committee 
choked  him  off — the  childless  little  mother  besought  for- 
giveness for  her  enemies  and  patiently  took  up  her  cross. 
She  is  toiling  today  in  an  humble  but  honest  occupation 
and  enjoys  the  respect  of  all  manly  men  and  noble  women. 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  325 

Not  one  word  has  ever  been  breathed  against  her  good 
name  except  by  the  holy  bigots  and  legal  hirelings  who 
are  trying  to  help  Baylor  University  out  of  the  hole.  She, 
is  "faithful  and  honest,"  as  the  Burlesons  bore  witness  when 
they  wanted  some  one  to  take  her  off  their  hands  and  ex- 
pected to  keep  the  case  out  of  court.  That  is  the  naked 
truth  in  nunce  anent  Antonia  Teixeira's  debauchment — 
though  told  by  the  "Apostle  of  the  Devil." 


BEANS  AND  BLOOD. 
THE  SOUTH  AGAIN  IN  THE  SOUP. 

Massachusetts  has  solemnly  decided  to  hold  Dixie  up  by 
the  patent  health-bustle,  single-handed  and  alone,  and  shake 
her  until  her  milk-white  teeth  rattle  like  a  pair  o'  Portuguese 
castanets  if  she  doesn't  refrain  from  roasting  nigger  rape- 
fiends.  When  Massachusetts  dons  her  war-paint  and  shrieks 
for  slaughter  she  is  too  terribly  awful  to  contemplate.  Boston 
is  already  grinding  the  sword  of  Gideon  and  flourishing 
the  jaw-bone  of  an  ass  over  the  shrinking  head  of  the  South- 
ern Philistine.  She  has  tucked  her  bloomers  in  her  boots 
and  bade  the  soul  of  Ossawattomie  Brown  resume  its  in- 
teresting itinerary.  Again  the  beacon  fires  are  brightly 
blazing,  the  clans  are  "gathering  from  the  hill-side,  gather- 
ing from  the  plain,"  while  the  ear-piercing  fife  and  thrilling 
trumpety-trump  of  the  snareskin  fiddle  proclaim  to  the 
wondering  universe  that  Yankee-doodle  is  still  something  of 
a  dandy. 

Faneuil  Hall  has  spoken,  and  that  with  no  uncertain 
sound.  On  November  11  was  gathered  in  that  historic 
pile  the  chivalry  of  the  city  of  salt  cod, — the  proud  patri- 
cians of  trade  who  trace  their  lineage  in  an  unbroken  line 
back  to  the  witch-burners.  The  buck  niggers  who  have 
drifted  to  Boston  in  their  tireless  search  for  social  equality, 
were  likewise  present,  in  brotherly  affiliation  with  long- 
haired excuses  for  white  men,  and  howled  themselves  hoarse 
in  an  attempt  to  fire  the  Northern  heart.  The  mayor  did 
himself  the  honor  to  preside  over  this  sweet-scented  as- 
semblage of  Meddlesome  Matties,  who  were  ready  to  sac- 
rifice all  their  relatives  on  the  altar  of  racial  equality  and 
political  reform.  The  temple  of  Janus  was  thrown  wide 
open  like  a  boot-jack;  Ate  came  whooping,  hot  from  hell; 
Bellona  gazed  into  the  assembled  gold-browed  spectacles, 
took  a  long  breath  and  shrieked  for  bella,  horrid  a  bella, 


326  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

which  were  equivalent  to  asking  her  prandial  neighbor  to 
pass  the  canned  blood.  The  orators  of  the  evening  dem- 
onstrated that,  as  a  distributor  of  "livers  and  lights,"  Gov. 
Hogg  is  but  an  awkward  amateur — that  if  Waite  wants  to 
ride  in  bright  red  gore  he  must  go  to  Boston. 

The  meeting  then  whereased  and  resoluted  in  most 
abominable  English  to  the  effect  that  niggers,  guilty  of 
nothing  worse  than  the  ravishment  of  Southern  white 
women,  shall  not  henceforth  be  fricasseed — that  these  "be- 
ings born  in  the  image  of  God  are  entitled  to  a  fair  trial 
by  a  jury  of  their  peers."  As  their  "peers"  in  these  parts 
have  been  killed  as  fast  as  caught,  this  means  that  we  must 
send  the  black  beasts  to  Boston,  where  3,000  of  their  mental 
and  moral  mates  were  recently  collected  in  the  same  corral. 
If  Almighty  God  resembles  in  personal  appearance  a  nig- 
ger ravisher,  it  is  small  wonder  that  he's  devoutly  wor- 
shipped by  the  Faneuil  Hall  folks.  They  belong  to  that 
class  of  mangy  mavericks  who  are  utterly  destitute  of  race 
pride — who  concede  that  "a  white  man  is  as  good  as  a 
nigger  if  he  behave  'himself."  Quite  naturally,  they  imag- 
ine that  the  Deity  is  the  prototype  of  Fred  Douglas — that 
Christ  was  conceived  from  such  a  source  by  a  white  woman 
without  her  consent.  The  Faneuil  Hall  meeting  declared 
in  the  name  of  Massachusetts  that  the  Ethiopian  is  not  an 
immoral  race,  nor  addicted  to  the  crime  of  rape;  that  the 
raison  d'etre  of  Southern  roasting-bees  is  to  keep  their  noble 
black  brother  in  political  subjection. 

It  was  the  barbecues  at  Tyler  and  Paris,  Texas,  that  oc- 
casioned Boston's  remarkable  outburst — that  led  to  the 
renaissance  of  the  erstwhile  John  Brown.  Massachusetts 
will  make  just  one  mouthful  of  Texas,  then  devour  the  rest 
of  Dixie.  We  may  expect  the  knight-errantry  of  Boston 
before  the  roses  bloom  again.  Sergeant  Fight-the-Good- 
Fight  and  Captain  Smite-'em-Hip-and-Thigh  will  swoop 
down  upon  us  with  a  Bible  in  one  hand  and  "The  Sword 
of  Bunker  Hill"  in  the  other.  Not  even  a  special  session 
of  the  Legislature  can  keep  the  Puritan  and  the  Cowboy 
apart.  Dallas  can  transform  the  J.  Harvey,  Jr.,  into  a  man- 
o'-war  and  seek  shelter  beneath  its  guns,  and  Waco  protect 
herself  by  putting  up  a  few  of  those  awful  lithographs  of 
the  erstwhile  Cotton  Palace;  but  the  rest  of  the  state  will 
be  naked  before  its  enemies.  Mexico  has  an  idea  concealed 
about  her  person  that  she  could  whip  the  United  States 
and  not  half  try  if  Texas  would  keep  out  of  the  muss,  and 
the  South  is  nursing  a  sneaking  suspicion  that  she  could 
make  the  effete  East  whistle  peccavi  through  her  proboscis 
if  the  West  would  give  bond  to  keep  the  peace.  Of1  course 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  327 

both  are  mistaken.  Mexico  imagines  that  San  Antonio  is 
the  "Gringo"  metropolis,  while  the  South  forgets  that  the 
New  Woman  has  appeared  in  Massachusetts  since  Lee 
made  a  monkey  of  McClellan.  Furthermore,  President 
Cleveland  'has  taken  up  his  summer  residence  at  Buzzard's 
Bay,  and  his  experience  with  substitutes  would  enable  him 
to  select  a  veritable  Sir  Launcelot.  Boston  does  not  run 
so  largely  to  beans  and  wind  as  in  the  erstwhile — even 
China  has  adopted  new  military  tactics. 

Suppose  that  Texas  and  Massachusetts  hold  a  conference 
between  the  lines  before  the  ball  opens  with  the  musical 

"Rounder  of  the  iron  six-pounder, 
hurling  death." 

Massachusetts  should  not  execute  us  without  affording 
us  an  opportunity  to  ask  forgiveness  and  bid  the  world 
farewell.  In  matters  so  serious  as  civil  war  it  were  well 
to  carefully  examine  the  casus  belli  before  making  a  break. 
We  call  for  a  parley  with  a  view  to  coming  to  an  accommo- 
dation; for  has  not  Job  said  that  "all  a  man  hath  will  he 
give  for  his  life?"  We  humbly  ask  that  the  brigadier-gen- 
erals of  the  Faneuil  Hall  Grand  Army  Corps  be  commis- 
sioned to  confer  with  us — and  may  the  pitying  gods  move 
them  to  compassion ! 

What  in  the  devil's  name  does  Massachusetts,  or  any 
other  Northern  state,  know  about  the  nigger?  You  have 
studied  the  -coon  at  long  range,  and  through  the  bottle- 
green  glasses  of  such  vindictive  blatherskites  as  Tourgee 
and  Cockcrill.  Occasionally  a  "smart  nigger,"  educated  at 
our  expense,  drifts  to  Boston  and  plays  upon  the  mis- 
guided sentiment  of  its  citizens  with  Munchhausenisms  pat- 
terned after  Uncle  Tom's  Ca'bin.  The  Ethiop  is  better 
treated  in  the  South  than  in  any  other  portion  of  the  Ameri- 
can Union.  We  freely  tax  ourselves  to  educate  his  off- 
spring and  build  hospitals  and  asylums  for  his  unfortunate. 
Now  that  Boston  is  turning  up  her  nose  at  Texas,  it  may 
be  well  to  remind  her  that  during  slavery  times  the  niggers 
dreaded  a  Massachusetts  driver  worse  than  the  devil — 
that  to  this  good  day  the  elder  Ethiops  have  no  use  for 
the  bean-eaters. 

Despite  the  ukase  of  Faneuil  Hall,  the  nigger  has  no 
more  conception  of  morality  than  a  hyena.  There  is  not 
one  buck  in  a  hundred  who  will  not  steal  a  pair  of  pants 
from  the  white  man  who  has  given  him  a  coat — who  will 
not  despoil  his  chicken  coop  after  being  presented  with  a 
capon.  There  is  not  one  wench  in  a  thousand  who  will  not 
sell  her  supposed  soul  for  the  price  of  a  circus  ticket.  Most 


328  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

nigger  preachers  will  steal  anything  they  can  carry,  and  the 
only  one  who  would  not  lie  when  the  truth  answered 
equally  as  well,  died  "befo'  d'  wah."  You  can  no  more 
educate  honor  and  chastity  into  a  coon  than  into  a  brindle 
cat.  We,  who  know  the  nigger,  do  not  expect  much  of 
him.  We  incur  large  expense  to  afford  him  every  oppor- 
tunity, but  it  is  seldom  that  he  rises  above  the  intellectual 
level  of  a  camp-meeting  pulpiteer.  Those  who  do  so  are 
usually  bastards — borne  by  black  women  to  soldiers  from 
Boston.  We  give  him  our  cast-off-clothes  and  broken  vis- 
tuals.  We  find  employment  for  him  wthen  more  compe- 
tent white  labor  stands  idle,  because  we  have  become  used 
to  providing  for  his  physical  well-being.  He  was  our  ward 
for  many  generations,  and  his  regard  for  "massa"  and 
"missus"  was  little  short  of  worship.  A  starving  horse  may 
obtain  a  square  meal  where  a  man  would  be  turned  away 
hungry.  All  recognize  the  helplessness  of  the  animal  and 
are  moved  to  compassion.  For  the  same  reason  the  most 
worthless  coon  may  keep  fat  and  sleek  in  the  Southland 
while  his  betters  go  hungry  to  bed. 

The  South  long  held  the  blacks  in  bondage,  and  this 
has  been  charged  up  against  her  as  an  unpardonable  crime. 
It  was  a  sin  against  herself,  and  cruelly  ihas  she  suffered. 
The  South  should  have  permitted  the  Ethiop  to  remain 
in  Africa,  a  snake-worshipping,  cannibalistic  savage.  The 
civilization  of  the  black  man,  such  as  it  is,  is  due  to  his 
enslavement  by  a  superior  race.  The  motive  of  the  Ameri- 
can slaveholder  was  doubtless  selfish.  The  North  freed 
her  slaves  because  she  found'  free  labor  the  shortest  road 
to  fortune;  the  South  retained  her  niggers  because  unfa- 
miliar with  a  great  economic  fact.  Had  slave  labor  proven 
profitable,  Mayor  Curtis  might  to-day  be  calling  the  roll 
of  his  bondsmen  on  Bunker  Hill.  Despite  the  efficient 
cause  of  slavery,  the  South  may  say  to  Sambo,  as  Prospero 
to  the  son  of  Sycorax: 

"I  have  used  thee,  filth  as  thou  art,  with  human  care. 
I  pitied  thee.    When  thou  did'st  not,  savage, 
Know  thy  own  meaning,  but  would'st  gabble  like 
A  thing  most  brutish,  I  endowed  thy  purposes 
With  words  that  made  them  known:    But  thy  vile  race, 
Though  thou  did'st  learn,  had  that  in't  which  good  natures 
Could  not  abide  to  be  with." 

While  held  in  slavery  the  negro  recognized  his  inferi- 
ority, and  no  more  aspired  to  mate  with  the  dominant  race 
than  does  the  buzzard  with  the  eagle.  During  the  civil 
war  the  blacks  were  left  on  lonely  plantations  with  the  fam- 
ilies of  their  masters  while  the  latter  went  to  t'he  front. 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  329 

They  were  precious  little  protection,  despite  the  Yankee 
idea  to  the  contrary;  but  no  more  fear  was  felt  that  they 
would  invade  the  sanctity  of  their  master's  families  than 
tho'  they  had  been  so  many  mules.  I  have  heard  of  but 
one  instance  of  such  infamy.  The  negroes  had  not  then  so 
much  as  dreamed  of  crossing  the  chasm  that  separates 
them  from  their  superiors;  but  when  accorded  their  free- 
dom and  the  elective  franchise  they  began  to  long  for  social 
equality.  Their  preachers — who  in  ante  bellum  days  were 
chiefly  valuable  for  breeding  purposes — wanted  white 
wives,  and  as  new  generations  arrived  at  the  age  of  puberty, 
violations  of  white  women  by  black  fiends  became  frequent. 
More  than  a  thousand  reputable  maids  and  matrons  have 
been  ravished' — and  many  of  them  murdered — -by  black 
bucks  during  the  last  dozen  years.  White  babes  have  been 
torn  from  the  cradle  and  sacrificed  upon  the  unclean  altar 
of  Ethiopian  lust.  No  Southern  woman  is  safe  from  as- 
sault beyond  the  reach  of  the  six-shooter.  No  white  babe 
is  secure  in  its  crib  unless  guarded  night  and  day.  The 
buck  nigger  is  a  black  cloud  hanging  over  every  Southern 
home.  The  dread  of  our  women  is  not  death,  for  a  worse 
fate  may  at  any  moment  befall  them. 

We  have  tried  "due  process  of  law"  on  the  ledherous 
devils  "born  in  the  image"  of  Boston's  deity.  We  have 
put  rapists  in  prison  and  given  them  to  the  gallows.  We 
have  bored  them  with  bullets.  We  have  hanged  them  be- 
tween heaven  and  earth  and  left  their  brutish  carcasses  for 
the  buzzards.  We  have  flayed  them1  alive,  and  all  without 
effect.  Having  found  the  law  a  failure  and  respectable  lynch- 
ing futile,  we  have  begun  to  kerosene  'em  and  set  'em  on 
fire.  If  we  cannot  insure  the  sanctity  of  our  homes,  by  the 
Lord  God  of  Israel,  we  will  have  the  satisfaction  of  making 
the  black  demons  suffer  all  the  tortures  of  the  damned. 

And  Boston  might  as  well  refrain  from  ripping  great 
orifices  in  her  undershirt;  for  if  we  knew  that  the  roasting 
of  a  negro  rape-fiend  would  bring  down  upon  us  all  the 
ardent  admirers  of  Ida  Wells  in  Old  and  New,  England, — 
all  the  powers  of  earth,  the  legions  of  hell  and  the  eternal 
wrath  of  heaven,  we  would  apply  the  torch  and  brave 
extermination.  It  were  better  to  be  dead,  damned  and 
delivered;  it  were  better  the  South  should  be  made  a 
desert  of  desolation  forever  and  a  day;  it  "were  better  that 
the  owl  and  the  jackal  should  make  our  ruined  homes  their 
habitat,  than  to  live,  a  race  of  cowardly  curs,  breeding 
babes  for  black  demons  to  debauch. 

So  much  doth  the  South  urge  in  her  defense.  Now 
stand  forth,  thou  city  of  baked  beans  and  buncombe,  and 


330  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

answer  to  a  counter  accusation :  The  blood  of  every  white 
babe  butchered  by  the  blacks,  of  every  maid  and  matron 
who  has  suffered  death  and  despoliation  by  these  demons, 
is  upon  the  heads  of  those  mischievous  meddlers  who  freed 
the  slave  and  made  him  a  political  sovereign ;  upon  the 
heads  of  those  unhung  idiots  who  have  been  prating  of 
racial  equality;  upon  the  heads  of  such  unclean  cattle  as 
those  who,  herded  together  in  Faneuil  Hall,  compared  a 
negro  rape-fiend  to  the  Deity,  and  threatened  to  take  up  arms 
in  his  defense.  Just  such  infernal  guff  by  ignorant  gillies, 
whose  chosen  vocation  is  vicious  intermeddling  with  mat- 
ters anent  which  they  know  less  than  nothing,  led  the  foul 
victims  of  the  Paris  fricassee  to  rip  open  a  white  babe  and 
debauch  the  poor  little  innocent  after  it  was  dead! 

It  is  easy  enough  to  make  excuses  for  the  "war  waged 
upon  the  South  in  behalf  of  the  slave.  We  long  ago  con- 
ceded that  it  was  the  result  of  an  honest  misconception. 
The  most  serious  of  its  consequences  to  the  South  was  not 
our  broken  altars  and  ruined  fanes,  not  the  improverish- 
ment  of  a  people  little  inured  to  labor,  nor  yet  the  lonely 
graves  that  dot  our  land  thick  as  autumn  leaves ;  it  was  the 
transformation,  as  if  by  infernal  magic,  of  millions  of 
stupid  slaves  into  American  sovereigns.  Improvident, 
idle  and  ignorant,  it  is  small  wonder  that  they  become  crim- 
inals and  courtesans.  Being  political  incapables,  they  are 
the  easy  prey  of  designing  demagogues.  The  South  shoul- 
dered this  appalling  burden  uncomplainingly  and  proceeded 
to  make  the  best  of  it,  for  the  ci-devant  master  is  really 
the  freedman's  best  friend.  Had  the  carpet-baggers,  profes- 
sional reformers  and  other  pestiferous  busy-bodies  let  the 
newmade  citizen  alone,  it  would  have  been  infinitely  better 
for  all  concerned;  but  they  proceeded  to  fill  his  fat  head 
with  false  ambitions,  to  preach  to  him  that  his  poverty,  born 
of  idleness,  was  the  result  of  persecution,  to  hint  that  no 
social  distinction  should  be  drawn  between  political  equals 
in  the  same  republic — that  the  only  solution  of  the  negro 
problem  was  miscegenation.  Then  followed,  as  a  natural 
sequence,  those  conditions  that  have  alarmed  our  self-consti- 
tuted critics. 

Educating  the  Ethiopian  were  like  casting  pearls  be- 
fore swine.  You  may  discover  jewels  in  the  head  of  a  toad, 
but  you'll  find  no  wisdom  in  the  skull  of  a  nigger.  The 
"brainy  black  men,"  to  whom  the  Bostonese  point  with 
pride,  are  simply  featherless  poll-parrots.  Education  only 
serves  ^  to  make  the  Ethiopian  impudent,  more  inclined  to 
live  without  honest  labor.  Politically  he  is  a  commodity, 
ever  for  sale  to  the  highest  bidder,  while  industrially  he 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  331 

isn't  worth  a  tinker's  dam  when  beyond  white  domination. 
The  idea  that  the  Southern  whites  rule  the  ballot-box  with 
shot-guns  is  all  moonshine.  We  can  buy  a  nigger's  vote 
for  fifty  cents,  while  it  costs  four  dollars  to  bury  him. 

The  black  is  here,  and  I  see  but  one  way  to  get  rid  of 
him,  and  that  is  to  drive  him  en  masse  beyond  the  Ohio 
and  give  our  nigger-loving  neighbors  an  opportunity  to 
test  their  fine  theories  by  conditions.  Boston  can  have  the 
whole  caboodle  if  the  Faneuil  Hall  crowd  will  pay  th$ 
freight.  But  it  is  our  duty,  as  honest  men,  to  give  her  an 
idea  what  to  expect  of  her  black  "images  of  God."  She  will 
have  to  build  more  prisons  and  poor-houses.  'She  will 
have  to  chain  Bunker  Hill  monument  to  the  center  of  gravity 
or  they'll  steal  it.  She  will  have  to  put  sheet-iron  lingerie 
on  her  marble  Goddess  of  Liberty  or  some  morning  she'll 
find  the  old  girl  with  her  head  mashed  in  and  bearing  marks 
of  sexual  violence.  By  all  means,  let  Massachusetts  take 
the  nigger  away  from  the  wicked  Texans  and  carry  him 
in  triumph  to  the  land  of  racial  equality,  political  reform 
and  gods  who  resemble  colored  ravishers.  That  were  much 
better  than  bruiting  it  about  that  we  make  bonfires  of  in- 
nocent blacks — both  "men  and  women" — just  to  see  them 
burn.  All  the  niggers  roasted  by  Texas  freely  confessed 
their  guilt.  They  were  identified  beyond  the  peradventure 
of  a  doubt.  There  may  have  been  rape  fiends  roasted  in  the 
South  who  "protested  their  innocence  even  in  the  very  jaws 
of  death."  There  have  been  criminals  hanged,  shot  or 
beheaded  in  every  country  who  declined  to  confess.  So  far 
as  I  know,  there  has  been  but  one  colored  woman  burned  in 
the  South  since  the  war.  If  I  remember  aright  she  assisted 
a  syphilitic  negro  lover  to  [debauch  two  little  girls,  both 
less  than  ten  years  of  age.  Massachusetts  has  put  a  num- 
ber of  white  women  to  death  on  the  suspicion  that  they  were 
witches ;  hence  her  criticism  of  the  South  seems  a  trifle  too 
much  like  the  devil  rebuking  sin. 

Massachusetts'  war  talk  is  all  damphoolishness.  It  were 
impossible  to  raise  in  the  entire  state  a  thousand  men  for 
the  invasion  of  the  South  on  behalf  of  the  Senegambian. 
The  great  body  of  the  Massachusetts  people  have  sense 
enough  to  know  that  the  South  is  civilized  and  that  the 
negro  is  a  semi-savage.  In  the  Faneuil  Hall  aggregation 
of  long-haired  he-virgins  there  were  not  a  dozen  men  who 
would  fight  their  own  shadows  on  compulsion.  They  repre- 
sent the  crank  element  of  the  Old  Bay  State,  an  element 
that  will  say  more  in  a  minute  than  it  will  stand  to  do  in  a 
month.  The  better  element  of  Boston  is  not  meddling  in 
other  people's  business.  It  understands  the  South.  It  ap- 


332  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

predates  the  black  burden  under  which  every  Southern  state 
is  struggling.  It  holds  female  chastity  in  high  esteem.  It 
rejoices  whenever  a  ravisher  is  done  to  death.  Boston  runs 
to  brains  as  well  as  to  beans  and  brown  bread.  But  she  is 
cursed  with  an  army  of  cranks  whom  nothing  short  of  a 
straight- jacket  or  a  swamp-elm  club  will  ever  control.  Bos- 
ton has  no  cause  to  blush  because  of  Southern  roasting- 
bees ;  but  the  wild  yodel  of  her  own  irrepressible  damphools 
— "one  of  whom  her  mayor  is  which" — might  well  tinge 
with  shame  the  brazen  cheek  of  Sodom.  If  Massachusetts 
really  wants  war  she  should  wage  one  of  extermination  on 
her  own  busybodies.  When  Cleveland  again  hires  a  sub- 
stitute he  should  select  the  Fool-Killer  and  assign  him  to 
duty  in  the  lobby  of  Faneuil  Hall. 


THE  REPUBLIC  IN  DANGER. 
WILL  THE  EAGLE  CEASE  TO  SCREAM  ? 

How  long  will  the  American  Union  endure?  It  is  cus- 
tomary to  speak  and  act  as  tho'  it  could  only  end  with  Time ; 
as  if  nothing  short  of  the  final  crash  of  the  Universe  rushing 
back  into  the  formless  realm  of  Chaos  and  Night  could  pos- 
sibly subvert  it. 

And  yet  it  is  but  a  new  thing — a  great  straddling  polit- 
ical calf  standing  doubtfully  upon  its  four  wobbly  legs, 
the  bones  of  which  are  still  but  gristle,  the  tendons  mere 
fatty  strings.  Thus  it  stands,  fronting  Time;  foolishly  im- 
agining itself  a  winged-lion  or  hippogriff,  one  of  the  few 
immortal  things  that  were  not  born  to  die!1  Really,  if  it 
meet  with  no  mishap  until  its  bones  have  time  to  harden — 
until  its  principles  still  in  a  nebulous  state  are  finally  fixed — 
it  will  doubtless  become,  if  not  an  immortal  winged-creature, 
at  least  a  fine  horned-bull,  able  to  paw  up  the  dirt  and  bellow 
with  the  proudest  of  bovines.  But  infant  governments,  like 
other  juveniles,  have  their  perils  to  pass  through ;  their 
colics  and  cramps,  measles  and  mumps,  and  it  is  a  long  cry 
from  the  baptismal  font  to  the  toga  virilis — from  wobbly, 
foolish  calfhood  to  mastership  of  the  herd.  It  were  well, 
perhaps,  not  to  forget  that  other  republics  have  filled  earth 
and  heaven  with  their  self-glorification  and  boasts  of  im- 
mortality, and  then,  quietly  or  otherwise,  meandered  out 
into  the  great  inane,  leaving  behind  as  monuments  but  a  few 
scraps  of  half  intelligible  history,  of  interest  chiefly  to  the 
foolish  antiquary. 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  333 

"The  soul  politic  having  departed,  what  can  follow  but 
that  the  body  politic  be  decently  interred,  to  avoid  putres- 
cence?" 

We  are  no  longer  American  citizens,  brothers  with  corn- 
mutual  interests ;  we  are  capitalists  and  laborers,  farmers 
and  manufacturers — each  class  fighting  desperately  not  to 
promote  the  general  welfare,  but  its  own  selfish  interest. 
We  are  divided  into  classes-social  and  classes-industrial, 
and  the  lines  of  demarcation  are  becoming  ever  more 
strongly  drawn.  Patriotism  has  been  throttled  by  greed, 
fraternity  by  jealousy.  We  no  longer  send  our  best  men 
to  Congress.  We  do  not  ask  what  a  candidate  can  do  to 
make  the  Union  stronger ;  we  do  not  inquire  what  he  knows 
of  the  science  of  government — but  rather  how  deep  a  haul 
he  can  make  on  the  treasury  for  the  special  behoof  of  our 
section;  how  large  an  appropriation  he  can  secure  for  the 
"improvement''  of  intermittent  creeks  and  impossible  har- 
bors ;  for  the  erection  of  useless  public  buildings ;  how  much 
"protection"  he  can  secure  for  our  products  at  the  expense 
of  the  rest  of  the  nation;  how  many  fat  federal  offices  he 
can  distribute  among  us.  We  are  after  spoils;  -we  have 
made  of  our  votes  levers  to  pry  open  the  public  treasury ; 
we  will  follow  any  demagogue  if  he  but  lead  us  to  the  flesh- 
pots,  reckless  of  the  future.  Where  is  hope?  What  is  to 
prevent  our  plunging  headlong-  into  that  mad  vortex  of  ruin, 
temporal  and  spiritual,  to  which  we  are  hastening  with  con- 
stantly accelerating  speed?  To  what  political  party  shall 
we  turn  for  salvation?  There  are  but  two  possessing 
power  for  good  or  ill,  and,  like  two  bad  roads,  if  we 
take  the  one  we  are  apt  to  regret  the  other.  Principles? 
What  principles  does  either  party  possess  that  it  will  not 
willingly  sacrifice  to  secure  the  mystic  sesame  that  makes  the 
doors  of  the  public  treasury  fly  open? 

Is  it  possible  that  co-operation  in  government,  as  in 
business,  is  foredoomed  to  failure — that  here  as  elsewhere 
it  is  true  that  "too  many  cooks  spoil  the  broth?"  Or  will 
the  mad  wreck  and  ruin  that  must  inevitably  follow  this 
dividing  of  the  national  house  against  itself  but  prove  a 
purgation  by  fire,  from  which  representative  government 
will  rise,  phoenix-like,  purer  and  stronger?  We  shall  see 
what  we  shall  see. 


Those  who  fear  the  downfall  of  the  Republic  through 
so-called  centralizing  tendencies  are  but  striving  desper- 
ately to  frighten  themselves  with  a  spectre  of  their  own 
contriving.  The  danger  lies  not  in  a  strong  central  gov- 


334  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

eminent,  but  in  a  weak  one.  It  is  not  "imperialism1"  we 
have  to  fear  so  much  as  the  State  sovereignty  hydra,  which 
was  scotched,  not  killed,  by  the  Lerncan  serpent  slayers  of 
'61-5.  This  double  sovereignty  of  State  and  Nation  is  a 
weak  spot  in  the  pillar  of  American  government,  one  preg- 
nant with  danger.  It  made  the  war  of  1812  a  pitiful  farce 
—would  have  given  us  a  slhameful  defeat  within  the  mem- 
ory of  men  now  living  had  Mexico  bred  true  fighting  men 
instead  of  beggars  and  lice.  It  has  several  times  threatened 
the  integrity  of  the  Union  and  once  cost  a  million  precious 
lives.  It  has  on  divers  occasions  very  nearly  embroiled 
us  in  war  with  foreign  powers,  and  may  do  so  at  any  time — 
then  handicap  us,  as  it  has  ever  done,  in  the  hour  of  peril ! 
Truly  was  it  said  of  old  that  the  house  divided  against  itself 
cannot  stand.  So  long  as  these  United  States  of  America 
are  a  congeries  of  Nations  instead  of  a  Nation — with  one 
supreme  head  to  whom  all  petty  governors  must  bow — it 
will  be  so  divided,  ready  to  melt  into  nothingness. 

Pessimism?  Not  a  bit  of  it.  A  pessimist,  with  an  eye 
to  see  and  mental  apparatus  to  digest  such  pabulum  as  the 
visual  nerve  provides  w,ould  not  believe  that  the  rickety 
pile  we  name  American  Union — and  brag  about  and  rob 
on  every  possible  occasion — could  stand  upright  a  single 
year;  could  sustain  the  faintest  adverse  wind  from  any 
quarter  of  tlhe  compass  whatsoever.  Forty  odd  separate 
and  distinct  buildings  of  different  styles  of  architecture 
huddled  together  helter-skelter  under  one  rickety  patch- 
work roof,  hovering  aloft  with  painful  effort,  pulled  at, 
even  shot  at,  the  props  all  rotten  and  worm-eaten — the  fact 
scarce  concealed  by  liberal  paint  and  cheap  gilding. 

That  the  rebellion  of  1861  did  not  bring  that  composite 
covering  down  with  a  crash;  that  it  did  not  tear  apart  those 
grotesquely  grouped  Nations  and  scatter  them  to  the  four 
winds  of  heaven  or  hades,  was  but  an  accident,  happy  or 
otherwise,  as  you  chance  to  view  it.  The  people  of  the 
North  and  South  were  at  swords'  points;  a  collision  was 
inevitable — cupping  had  become  a  necessity.  The  very 
fact  that  the  South  was  determined  to  get  out  of  the  Union 
made  the  North  equally  as  determined  that,  cost  what  it 
might,  the  Union  should  be  preserved  intact.  It  was  not 
that  the  people  of  the  North  loved  the  Union  more,  but 
that  they  loved  the  South  less,  that  gave  vigor,  even  viru- 
lence, to  their  war  cry  of  "the  Union  forever,"  with  hurrah 
boys  attachment.  They  "had  it  in  for  the  nigger  drivers" 
and  were  only  too  happy  when  the  latter  gave  them  an  ex- 
cuse to  shuck  their  linen.  Really,  it  was  not  so  much  a 
question  of  whether  the  Union  should  be  preserved  as 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  335 

\\hrthcr  John  Brown's  soul  should  be  permitted  to  go 
inriiiidrriiig  musically  on,  lhat  caused  the  Northerner  to 
gird  sword  on  thigh  and  go  marching  from  Atlanta  to  the 
sea — doing  his  share  meanwhile  to  solve  the  negro  prob- 
lem from  an  ethnological  as  well  as  a  political  standpoint. 


Now  that  the  negro  can  knock  off  work  without  asking 
leave;  can  give  over  petit  for  grand  larceny  whenever  he 
can  get  elected  to  office — and  John  Brown's  soul  goes 
marching  unchallenged — Mason  and  Dixon's  semi-mythical 
line  is  slowly  but  surely  fading  from  a  grand  canyon  to  a 
mere  scratch  in  the  ground;  but  a  new  sectional  line  is 
being  drawn  between  the  East  and  the  West  that  bids  fair 
to  make  no  end  of  trouble  in  the  near  future.  The  most 
dangerous  of  all  lines,  however,  is  that  being  drawn  ever 
broader  and  deeper  between  the  capitalist  and  the  laborer; 
or,  to  dodge  the  hair-splitting  of  political  economists,  be- 
tween Dives  and  Lazarus — between  the  man  who  has  mil- 
lions in  excess  of  his  needs  and  the  man  whose  chief  capital 
is  an  active  .appetite.  It  is  along  this  line  that  t'he  first 
sputtering  of  that  revolution  which  is  destined  to  try  to 
the  uttermost  our  present  form  of  government  will  first  be 
heard — nay,  is  even  now  audible.  This  is  a  revolution,  re- 
bellion or  what  you  will,  that  no  marching  to  the  sea,  fall 
of  Richmond  and  the  like  will  put  down;  one  there  is  no 
force  able  to  cope  withal.  Once  well  under  way,  it  will 
run  its  course;  no  flag-flaunting,  resolution  by  prominent 
citizens,  enactment  of  Congress — not  even  an  appropria- 
tion will  suffice  to  check  it.  The  only  safety  for  our  estab- 
blished  forms  and  formulas  lies  in  their  quiet  but  rapid 
metamorphosis.  Our  wise  men,  if  they  would  "save  the 
country,"  must  no  longer  waste  time  trying  to  prop  up 
buildings  that  arc  even  now  tumbling  down;  but  break  the 
force  of  the  fall  the  best  they  may,  clear  away  the  rubbish 
and  supervise  the  erection  of  more  useful  edifices.  They 
must  not  seek  so  much  to  repress  the  gathering  storm  as 
to  give  it  direction,  that  it  destroys  not  the  useful  with  the 
useless. 

The  workingman  must  be  made  to  feel  that  he,  too,  has 
a  country  and  that  it  is  in  very  truth  "the  land  of  tine  free 
and  the  home  of  the  brave" — of  men  courageous  enough 
to  say  to  the  employing  capitalist:  We,  too,  are  men  like 
thce;  we  are  your  fellow-countrymen,  not  your  serfs.  Our 
labor  you  can  only  secure  by  giving  therefor  a  just  propor- 
tion of  its  product ;  our  votes— our  manhood — you  can  in 
nowise  command.  These  are  not  for  sale — or  rent. 


336  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

One  great  trouble  with  our  government  is  that  it  is  be- 
coming too  complex,  too  redundant.  There  is  danger  of 
its  breaking  down  with  its  own  weight.  We  must  study  to 
simplify  it,  to  dispense  with  many  of  our  present  offices, 
instead  of  creating  more.  The  number  of  our  tax-eaters 
is  becoming  alarming.  They  already  constitute  a  vast  non- 
productive army;  their  support  is  becoming  a  serious  drain 
upon  American  industry.  We  have  too  many  laws  and 
law-makers ;  too  much  red  tape  that  hinders  rather  than 
helps  Justice  in  the  manipulation  of  her  sw,ord  and  scales. 
Government,  municipal.  State  or  National,  is  a  corporation 
in  which  every  citizen  is  a  stockholder,  sharing  in  the  gains 
or  losses.  The  public  service  should,  therefore,  be  reduced 
to  a  purely  business  basis.  The  demagogue  who  mounts 
dry-goods  box  or  editorial  tripod  and  prates  about  rota- 
tion in  office  should  be  gagged  with  his  own  stupid 
nescience.  When  we  secure  faithful  and  efficient  servants 
we  must  keep  them  as  long  as  possible  instead  of  turning 
them  adrift  to  make  place  at  the  public  teat  for  partisan 
"workers."  The  idea  that  public  treasure  is  legitimate  spoil 
must  be  weeded  out.  It  is  a  rank,  infectious  growth  that 
is  rapidly  strangling  all  that  is  good  in  our  boasted  repre- 
sentative government. 


MARRIAGE  AND  MISERY. 
SOME  SANCTIFIED  DEBAUCHERY. 

There  are  probably  a  million  women  in  this  land  living 
lives  of  legalized  prostitution;  who  conceive  -children  in 
hate  of  husbands  they  abhor,  bring  them  forth  in  bitterness 
of  spirit  to  be  reared  in  an  atmosphere  of  discord — off- 
spring stamped  from  their  very  inception  with  the  die  of 
the  criminal  or  the  courtesan.  Yet  the  purists  and  pietists 
''view  with  alarm"  the  vast  increase  in  the  number  of 
divorces;  are  weeping  and  wailing  because  women  will  not 
suffer  in  silence  a  bondage  that  is  bestial — a  prostitution 
pre-eminently  the  worst  in  the  world,  that  of  loveless  mar- 
riage. Day  and  night  the  doleful  jeremiad  goes  up  from 
these  pious  pharisees  that  the  laxity  of  American  divorce 
laws  is  imperiling  the  morals  of  the  people,  sapping  the 
home  and  threatening  to  topple  our  entire  system'  into  ruin 
irremediable. 

And  what  remedy  do  they  propose?  Uniform  divorce 
laws  and  a  reduction  of  the  number  of  causes  for  w'hich 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  337 

marital  bonds  may  be  legally  broken.  This  would  be  equiv- 
alent to  enacting  a  law  that  people  should  not  summon  a 
physician  except  in  certain  dire  exigencies.  Those  who 
would  elevate  public  morals  by  repressing  legal  separations 
appear  to  consider  lax  divorce  laws  the  cause  rather  than 
the  result  of  marital  misery.  They  are  pounding  away 
vigorously  at  the  shadow,  leaving  the  substance  untouched. 

These  foolish  philosophers  appear  to  be  harboring  the 
hallucination  that  where  divorce  is  not  difficult,  husbands 
and  wives  are  taken  on  trial;  that  matches  are  made  just 
for  amusement  or  to  gratify  a  prurient  passion,  and  that 
women  pretending  to  respectability  change  their  lawful 
companions  much  as  men  of  the  world  do  their  mistresses ; 
also  that  where  it  is  next  to  impossible  to  break  the  mar- 
riage bond  it  is  regarded  with  greater  veneration  and  en- 
tered into  with  much  greater  caution.  Doubtless  a  few  old 
roues  and  adventuresses  might  make  a  business  of  marry- 
ing if  divorce  could  be  had  for  the  asking,  but  it  is  an  insult 
to  the  better  class  of  American  women  to  suggest  that  any 
law  could  so  demoralize  them  that  they  would  deliberately 
wed  men  with  whom  they  did  not  expect  to  pass  their  lives. 

Wedlock  is  holy  only  where  there  exists  mutual  love  and 
respect.  Such  unions  do  not  need  to  be  reinforced  by  strict 
marriage  laws.  They  mean  much  more  than  a  "civil  con- 
tract;" they  mean  devotion  unto  death,  and  would  stand 
unshaken  if  every  law  known  to  man  should  perish  from 
the  earth.  Only  such  unions  should  endure.  All  others 
arc  unholy  and  unclean — civil  contracts  to  commit  a  crime 
against  posterity — and  should  be  dissolved.  Those  who 
protest  so  bitterly  against  divorce,  who  would  compel  peo- 
ple to  live  together  after  love  has  flown,  appear  to  think 
the  marriage  ceremony  a  thaumaturgic  incantation  which 
sanctifies  debauchery,  a  modern  correlative  of  the  ancient 
rites  of  Bacchus. 

That  eminent  statistician,  Hon.  Carroll  D.  Wright,  has 
recently  stated  that  during  the  twenty  years  ending  with 
1886,  there  were  granted  in  the  United  States  328,716  de- 
crees for  divorce;  that  the  number  in  1867  was  9,937  as 
against  25,535  in  1886,  being  an  increase  of  nearly  157  per 
cent.,  while  the  population  of  the  country  increased  during 
the  same  period  only  about  60  per  cent.  Mr.  Wright  added, 
almost  unnecessarily  one  would  think,  that  "the  divorce  sta- 
tistics do  not  fully  indicate  or  measure  the  marital  infelicity 
or  social  misery  of  the  country ;  they  only  measure  the  mis- 
ery which  can  no  longer  abide  conditions,  and  when  parties 
have  the  courage  to  publicly  seek  release  from  demoralizing 
burdens." 


338  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

Those  words  in  quotation  are  worthy  serious  study. 
"When  they  have  the  courage'' — to  go  into  court  and  recite 
their  grievances,  to  lay  bare  their  torn  hearts  to  the  world, 
to  be  badgered  and  baited  by  shyster  lawyers,  made  the  cyn- 
osure of  the  rabble,  and  have  the  degradation  and  despair 
which  they  would  fain  hide  from  their  dearest  friends, 
caught  up  by  a  prurient  press  and  heralded  to  the  four 
winds  of  heaven !  Only  people  who  have  the  courage  can 
stand  that  kind  of  thing,  can  hope  for  legal  relief  from  bonds 
that  make  life  a  burden.  And  what  kind  of  people  possess 
this  courage?  Those  who  least  deserve  relief — brazen 
women  and  brutish  men.  How  can  a  high-bred  gentleman 
go  into  court  and  brand  the  wife  to  whom  he  poured  the 
whole  wealth  of  his  heart,  as  a  wanton — confess  himself 
that  most  pitiable  of  all  objects,  a  cuckold?  If  they  have 
children,  how  can  he  deliberately  cloud  their  whole  lives? 
How  can  a  modest,  sensitive  woman  go  before  a  rabble  and 
rehearse  the  brutal  scenes  that  have  made  her  home  a  hell  ? 
No,  they  cannot  do  it ;  they  must  suffer  in  silence  or  quietly 
depart,  leaving  their  unworthy  mate  to  explain  the  separa- 
tion as  their  interest  or  maliciousness  may  suggest. 

The  number  of  divorces  has  indeed  become  appalling ;  but 
this  is  but  a  partial  suppuration  of  the  sore.  It  argues,  not 
that  divorce  laws  are  too  lax,  but  that  society  is  rotten. 
Marital  misery  cannot  be  decreased  by  denying  it  relief.  If 
a  woman  does  not  love  and  honor  her  husband  above  all 
other  men,  she  might  as  well  be  in  a  brothel  as  compelled  to 
share  his  bed.  If  a  man  does  not  love  his  wife,  happiness 
cannot  abide  in  that  home.  People  who  do  not  desire  to  live 
together  should  be  allowed  to  legally  separate  without  being 
compelled  to  go  into  court  with  their  grievances.  It  is  a 
matter  which  they  alone  are  competent  to  wisely  decide. 
They  have  entered  into  a  ''civil  contract"  to  make  each  other 
happy.  If  either  wishes  to  annul  that  contract  it  is  prima 
facie  evidence  that  it  has  not  been  fulfilled,  is  void,  and 
should  be  so  pronounced  by  the  courts. 

To  guard  against  hasty  and  ill-considered  action  the  law 
might  provide  that  application  for  divorce  be  followed  by  a 
separation  of  six  months,  during  which  period  the  marital 
relations  would  be  suspended  in  law  and  in  fact.  At  the 
expiration  of  that  period,  an  application  that  the  divorce 
be  made  absolute  should  be  followed  by  a  decree  to  that 
effect,  proper  provision  made  for  the  children,  if  any,  result- 
ing from  the  union.  Unquestionably  such  a  regime  would 
increase  the  number  of  divorces.  More  people  would  "have 
the  courage"  to  seek  separation  from  uncongenial  mates  if 
they  did  not  have  to  go  into  court  with  a  lingering  tale  of 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  339 

woe — to  explain  to  all  Christendom,  through  the  columns 
of  a  sensation-seeking,  garbage-grabbing  press,  why  said 
mates  were  to  them  a  source  of  misery.  It  would  afford 
relief  to  many  cultured  gentlemen  and  refined  ladies  to 
whom  our  present  barbarous  system  of  procedure  offers  only 
a  cure  infinitely  worse  than  the  complaint. 

The  objections  that  libertines  would  marry  young  ladies 
with  deliberate  intent  to  secure  divorces  is  not  without 
weight ;  but  we  cannot  well  condemn  those  already  in  the 
Slough  of  Despond  to  remain  there  because  to  help  them  out 
will  afford  a  few  fools  golden  opportunity  to  fall  in.  With 
the  law  as  suggested,  young  ladies  really  deserving  our  con- 
sideration would  not  be  so  ready  to  contract  hasty  marriages 
with  men  of  whom  they  knew  little.  As  matters  now  stand 
many  incautious  women  are  victimized  by  adventurers  who 
do  not  hesitate  to  marry  as  often  as  opportunity  offers. 

While  we  may  properly  look  to  law-reform  to  relieve 
much  of  the  marital  misery  now  existing,  we  should  strive 
to  prevent,  rather  than  to  provide  a  panacea  for  this  ill  in 
the  future.  The  church  might  profitably  allow  the  heathen 
a  holiday  and  devote  a  little  more  of  its  energies  to  teach- 
ing the  American  people  that  marriage  is  more  than  a  "civil 
contract"  that  may  be  entered  into  much  as  one  does  into  a 
contract  for  a  car-load  of  cotton  or  a  pound  of  putty.  It 
should  set  its  face  like  flint  against  "marriages  of  con- 
venience ;"  should  launch  some  of  its  thunderbolts  it  is  now 
wasting  on  the  heads  of  harmless  agnostics,  at  those  pious 
people  who  teach  their  daughters  that  the  chief  end  and  aim 
of  their  lives  must  be  to  marry  money  instead  of  men.  Our 
public  schools  should  not  waste  quite  so  much  time  ascer- 
taining the  number  of  bones  in  the  caudal  appendages  of  the 
ichthyosaurus,  or  determining  just  when  the  paleozoic  gave 
place  to  the  mesozoic,  and  that  in  turn  was  tumbled  into  the 
unlamented  erstwhile  by  the  cenozoic  time ;  but  should  de- 
vote an  hour  occasionally  to  teaching  the  rising  generation 
something  of  the  sacredness  of  Lamartine's  trinity — the 
trinity  of  the  father,  mother  and  child. 

That  is  the  only  hope  for  the  future.  Laws  cannot  make 
a  people  virtuous  or  happy.  They  cannot  prevent  mistakes 
in  marriages.  They  cannot  guard  the  sanctity  of  the  home. 


340  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

WAR  OR  WIND? 
UNCLE  SAM  AS  DON  QUIXOTE. 

Britain's  royal  beast  and  Columbia's  bald-headed  bird  are 
evidently  preparing  to  give  an  interesting  imitation  of  the 
historical  monkey  and  parrot — to  have  "one  hell  of  a  time." 
President  Cleveland  slipped  a  cannon  cracker  into  Queen 
Victoria's  Christmas  sock,  and  is  now  waiting  to  receive  in 
return  the  courtesies  of  the  season.  The  old  girl  has  got 
to  sand  her  hands,  seize  her  soap-stick  and  call  the  ripsnort- 
in',  hades-erecting  bluff  of  the  Western  warrior  bold,  else 
concede  Uncle  Sam's  right  or  ability  to  put  a  red  fence 
around  the  Western  hemisphere  and  compel  the  royal  guys 
of  Europe  to  keep  off  the  grass.  The  party  in  the  Populist 
pants  and  the  Tippecanoe  tile  is  trailing  the  flowing  narra- 
tive of  his  star-spangled  cut-away  in  the  middle  of  the  road, 
carrying  an  adult  cypress  shingle  on  each  shoulder  and  os- 
tentatiously biting  his  thumbs  at  John  Bull.  He  has  gone 
deliberately  forth,  with  a  search-warrant  in  one  hand  and  a 
forty  candle-power  arc  light  in  the  other,  to  look  for  trou- 
ble, and  either  Cranfill  or  Christ  hath  said,  ''Seek  and  ye 
shall  find." 

In  browsing  around,  seeking  whom  he  may  devour,  the 
British  lion  has  encountered  something  he  can't  digest. 
While  gaily  despoiling  the  nests  of  ospreys  he  has  inad- 
vertently run  his  muzzle  into  the  eyrie  of  the  American 
eagle,  and  unless  the  brute  removes  it  with  neatness  and 
despatch,  he  will  be  sent  home  with  his  tail  frozen  to  his 
belly-band  and  both  optics  swinging  in  the  breeze. 

In  my  humble  opinion,  Cleveland  made  a  large,  piebald 
ass  of  himself  when  he  penned  that  arbitrate~or-fight  pro- 
nunciamento.  Some  public  enemy  had  probably  slipped  a 
little  gunpowder  into  the  presidential  demijohn,  for  Grover 
evidently  mistook  himself  for  that  substitute  v/ho  subdued 
the  Southern  Confederacy.  He  longed  once  again  to  hear 
the  roar  of  battle  and  set  his  brisket  against  the  bayonet — 
to  drink  hot  blood  out  of  a  camp  skillet  and  satisfy  his  mar- 
tial soul  with  the  glorious  pomp  and  circumstance  of  war. 
It  is  difficult  indeed  to  break  these  prancing  war-steeds  to  the 
plow.  The  smell  of  holiday  powder  and  the  roll  of  the  toy 
drum  causes  them  to  stand  on  their  hind  legs  and  neigh  for 
a  renascence  of  the  days  that  are  dead. 

There  is  nothing  for  it  now  but  to  back  the  President's 
foolish  bluff  to  the  last  extremity.  That  is  the  penalty  we 
must  pay  for  having  placed  at  the  head  of  Federal  affairs  a 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  341 

man  more  skilled  in  pinochle  than  diplomacy,  who  runs  to 
belly  rather  than  brains  and  drinks  bourbon  as  if  it  were 
Weiss  beer.  According  to  reliable  reports,  the  President 
sat  him  down  in  a  fit  of  pique,  and,  while  his  "hair  was  pull- 
ing" penned  in  a  few  minutes  that  message  which  may  in- 
volve the  world  in  war  and  set  back  the  hand  on  the  human 
horologue  a  thousand  years.  His  case  of  katsen jammer  is 
likely  to  cost  us  dear.  Had  he  embroiled  us  with  almost  any 
other  transatlantic  power,  we  might  have  crawfished  out  of 
it  with  credit  by  consigning  him  to  a  Keeley-cure  establish- 
ment or  lunatic  asylum ;  but  we  cannot  afford  to  temporize 
even  a  little  bit  with  John  Bull.  Such  a  policy  would  be 
interpreted  by  this  professional  bluffer  as  a  square  back- 
down, and  would  render  him  more  insolent  and  overbearing 
than  ever. 

Sooner  or  later,  Uncle  Sam  has  got  to  give  his  British 
cousin  a  lesson  in  international  courtesy — has  got  to  hold 
Britain's  marauding  beast  up  by  the  narrative  and  bump  its 
fat  head  against  Plymouth  Rock  until  his  fangs  fall  out—- 
and this  disagreeable  duty  cannot  be  long  delayed.  Another 
war  between  the  two  great  English-speaking  powers  has 
been  brewing  for  half  a  century  and  cannot  be  permanently 
side-tracked  by  even  the  most  careful  diplomacy  or  skilled 
hypocrisy.  It  is  inscribed  in  the  Book  of  Fate — either  Rome 
or  Carthage  must  feel  upon  her  neck  the  heel  of  the  con- 
queror. We  might  just  as  well  settle  the  hash  of  the  world's 
bully  and  leave  to  posterity  the  privilege  of  paying  the  bills. 
It  will  serve  to  remind  them  of  their  glorious  ancestors — 
and,  while  in  the  throes  of  hysterical  patriotism,  they'll  place 
all  the  war-bonds  and  greenbacks  on  a  gold-basis  and  pro- 
vide our  whiskered  orphans  with  liberal  pensions. 

The  trade  relations  of  the  two  countries  are  particularly 
close  and  mutually  profitable.  John  Bull  and  Brother  Jona- 
than wine  and  dine,  toast  and  taffy  each  other — indulge  in 
a  great  deal  of  gush  anent  the  common  ancestry,  kindred  in- 
stitutions and  the  high  destiny  of  the  great  English-speaking 
Brotherhood;  but  all  the  time  they  know  they  are  lying 
like  Cretans — are  indulging  the  hypocritical  courtesies  of 
commerce,  the  artificial  smiles  and  effusive  hand-shakings 
of  the  shop.  Ethnologically,  the  English  and  Americans  are 
as  little  alike  as  are  the  Germans  and  the  French.  There  is 
a  mighty  tide  of  English  blood  in  America ;  but  it  has  been 
modified  by  climatic  conditions  and  the  admixture  of  Danish 
and  German,  while  the  Gael  has  tinctured  it  with  iron  and 
the  Celt  with  Tabasco  sauce.  England  may  have  been  our 
"mother  country"  a  century  or  so  ago ;  but  to-day  she  is  not 
even  our  anthropological  step-dame.  We  are  no  more 


342  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

Englishmen  because  we  employ  the  language,  than  a  parrot  is 
a  Baptist  preacher  because  it  stands  on  two  legs  and  gabbles 
anent  things  of  which  it  knowrs  nothing. 

We  owe  to  England  no  "debt  of  gratitude."  She  has 
done  nothing  for  us  except  to  fatten  upon  the  fruits  of  our 
industry,  oppress  and  insult  us  in  the  day  of  our  infancy 
and  conspire  against  us  in  the  day  of  our  strength.  Despite 
the  "many  expressions  of  good  will,"  down  deep  in  the 
heart  of  each  nation  is  a  fervent  desire  to  humiliate  the 
other — a  feeling  that  needs  little  nursing  to  flame  forth  in 
hate  so  rancorous  as  to  make  peace  impossible.  John  Bull 
has  never  forgotten  nor  forgiven  the  Boston  tea-party  and 
Bunker  Hill.  Yorkto\vn  has  been  a  thorn  in  his  side  for  a 
century,  New  Orleans  is  a  fly  in  his  ointment.  But  it  is 
the  growing  commerce  and  the  expanding  power  of  the 
new  Nation,  born  of  his  o"wn  brutality,  that  aggrieves  him 
most.  He  aspires  to  be  the  autocrat  of  the  earth;  to  place 
all  nations  and  peoples  under  tribute  to  "the  Tight  Little 
Isle" — to  make  them  the  industrial  peons  of  his  grasping 
tradesmen ;  and  day  by  day  the  truth  of  Napoleon's  prophecy 
— that  America  was  destined  to  put  an  everlasting  crimp  in 
Britain's  vaulting  ambition — is  being  driven  home  to  the 
wolfish  heart,  the  iron  has  entered  his  sordid  soul.  When 
not  \vrestling  with  Brother  Jonathan  for  the  best  end  of  the 
bargain  in  beeves,  cotton  and  corn,  or  striving,  by  the  pur- 
chase of  political  Benedict  Arnolds,  to  shape  our  financial 
system  for  his  profit  and  our  impoverishment,  his  tone  is 
exasperating  if  not  actually  insulting.  His  globe-trotters 
take  a  peep  at  our  institutions  from  the  windows  of  a 
palace-car,  enjoy  our  hospitality,  then  meander  home  to  fill 
their  pockets  with  dirty  pence  by  pandering  to  anti-Amer- 
ican prejudice  by  caricaturing  us  in  stupid  plays  and  lying 
periodicals.  Even  Charles  Dickens,  whom  we  enriched 
and  worshiped  as  a  god — beneath  whose  feet  Columbia 
laid  her  shining  hair — repaid  our  love  with  the  base  ingrati- 
tude characteristic  of  his  brethren.  In  our  joy  at  meeting 
the  author  of  Little  Nell  we  forgot  that  he  was  a  Briton — 
that  tho'  he  might  be  the  brightest  and  the  wisest,  he  must 
of  necessity  be  "the  meanest  of  mankind." 

John  Bull's  pauper  "nobility" — with  bawds  and  panders 
for  progenitors — consider  American  heiresses  their  legiti- 
mate game.  Englishmen  come  hither  in  the  steerage  of 
tramp  steamers  and  accumulate  fortunes;  but  when  their 
wives  become  enciente  they  send  them  across  the  sea  that 
their  brats  may  be  born  British  subjects  instead  of  American 
sovereigns,  then  bring  back  these  cringing  slaves  of  a  rotten 
monarchy  to  be  educated  at  the  expense  of  a  people  whom 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  343 

they  profess  to  despise.  They  fatten  beneath  the  American 
flag,  but  when  asked  to  bear  arms  in  its  defense,  plead  the 
exemption  of  aliens.  The  Gael  and  the  Celt,  the  Dane  and 
the  Pole,  the  German  and  the  Russ  consider  a  flag  worthy 
to  shield  their  roof-tree  good  enough  to  fight  for,  and  be- 
come enthusiastic  American  citizens,  ready  to  do  and  die  for 
the  country  of  their  adoption ;  but  once  an  Englishman,  al- 
ways an  Englishman.  They  are  so  inordinately  proud  of 
being  the  "humble  subjects"  of  a  beery  old  female,  and  so 
ready  to  pour  into  her  ample  ear  their  tale  of  woe  at  every 
opportunity,  that  their  presence  here  is  a  constant  menace 
to  the  peace  of  a  nation  that  has  afforded  them  an  oppor- 
tunity to  rise  superior  to  that  state  in  "which  they  were  born 
— to  develop  from  grimy  paupers  into  pot-bellied  plutocrats, 
from  menials  existing  on  "tips"  contemptuously  tossed 
them  by  gentlemen,  into  pompous  millionaires. 

When  John  Bull  attempts  to  be  pleasant  with  us  he  only 
succeeds  in  being  patronizing.  His  diplomacy  is  deceit 
that  might  shame  a  disciple  of  Machiayelli,  while  his  friend- 
ship is  bounded  by  the  shilling.  During  our  civil  war  the 
present  prime  minister  openly  declared  that  the  disruption 
of  this  nation  would  make  to  the  commercial  advantage  of 
England,  and  those  brutal  words  made  him  the  political  idol 
of  his  coldly-calculating  countrymen.  And  yet  the  Anglo- 
maniacs  are  prattling  of  the  "indissoluble  ties  that  bind  to- 
gether the  great  English-speaking  brotherhood,"  and  snivel- 
ing about  John  Bull's  "friendship  for  Brother  Jonathan !" 
It  is  a  friendship  akin  to  that  of  Judas  Iscariot — he  kisses 
only  to  betray. 

True,  these  are  but  trifles,  at  which  Americans,  conscious 
of  their  country's  invincible  strength,  affect  to  laugh ;  but  it 
is  the  laugh  of  men  who  long  to  express  their  hilarity  witH 
martial  music  and  double-shotted  guns.  People  in  this 
frame  of  mind  can  easily  find  a  pretext  for  booming  the 
coffin  trust.  In  fact,  the  official  casns  belli  in  nearly  every 
bloody  struggle  has  been  but  a  specious  apology  to  the  world 
for  letting  slip  the  dogs  of  war.  Petty  grievances  accumulate 
and  bitterness  is  fostered,  until,  without  apparent  cause, 
there  comes  the  conflagration. 

I  sincerely  trust  that  the  political  buncombe  of  President 
Cleveland  will  not  prove  a  match  in  the  great  powder  mag- 
azine; but  if  the  sword  is  once  drawn  it  should  not  be 
sheathed  while  the  shadow  of  Britain's  flag  falls  upon  one 
acre  of  the  western  world.  When  Columbia  strikes  again 
in  the  name  of  human  liberty  she  must  strike  to  kill — must 
make  her  flag  a  terror  to  tyranny.  We  have  already  had 
two  wars  with  England,  and  we  must  make  it  "three  times 


344  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

and  out."  We  gave  the  British  lion  a  breakfast  in  1776, 
a  dinner  in  1812,  but  the  omnivorous  beast  is  not  yet  sat- 
isfied. If  he  puts  his  paws  under  our  mahogany  again, 
we  must  serve  him  with  a  supper  that  will  forever  satiate 
his  lust  for  Yankee  gore. 

Nothing  short  of  dismemberment  of  the  Britism  Empire 
will  put  England  permanently  on  her  good  behavior,  and 
this  Uncle  Sam  can  accomplish  in  half  the  time  it  required 
to  conquer  the  Southern  Confederacy.  For  generations 
Erin,  prostrate  and  bleeding  beneath  the  feet  of  Britain's 
marauding  beast  has  appealed  to  us  for  aid.  We  have 
given  her  our  sympathy  and  opened  to  her  our  purse;  now 
let  us  given  her  the  sword,  beneath  whose  keen  edge  her 
ancient  enemy  has  learned  to  cower.  In  case  of  war,  let  it 
be  emblazoned  on  every  battle-flag  that  Ireland's  autonomy 
is  a  pre-requisite  to  peace.  Let  us  throw  fifty  thousand 
fighting  men  into  the  Emerald  Isle,  as  a  nucleus  around 
which  the  Irish,  scattered  throughout  the  world,  may  rally, 
and  strike  one  herculean  blow  for  God  and  native  land.  Do 
this,  and  the  Irish — who  have  constituted  England's  right 
arm  for  a  hundred  years — will  fight  this  war,  and  they'll 
fight  it  to  a  finish.  From  every  land  and  clime  upon  which 
shines  the  sun  the  fiery  Celts  will  come  trooping  to  the 
fray,  and  unless  held  in  check  by  Columbia's  strong  hand, 
they'll  make  of  Ireland's  oppressor  a  desolation  forever 
and  a  day.  Twice  has  England  allied  herself  with  the 
American  savages  in  war  upon  this  country.  While  she  as- 
sailed us  in  front,  she  incited  the  murderous  redskins  to 
attack  the  defenseless  cabins  and  isolated  villages  scattered 
along  our  western  frontier.  It  were  but  retributive  justice 
to  turn  the  Celts,  maddened  by  generations  of  cruel  out- 
rage and  brutal  robbery — in  their  thirst  for  vengeance — 
loose  in  their  marts  of  trade. 

Those  milk-and-water  Anglo-maniacs,  who  are  crying 
aloud  in  the  mugwump  press  that,  in  case  of  war  we  would 
be  at  the  mercy  of  England's  ironclads,  should  be  sent 
across  the  sea  where  they  may  feel  safe.  They  are  the  lin- 
eal descendants  of  those  tories  who  preached  humble  sub- 
mission to  crazy  King  George,  and  put  their  "white  livers 
on  exhibition  when  John  Bull  was  impressing  American 
seamen.  They  told  America  then  that  she  was  not  pre- 
pared for  war,  and  that  "the  British  navy  would  dictate 
terms  of  peace  off  New  York  and  Boston."  They  gave  an 
imitation  of  Jonah,  who  went  bawling  up  and  down  the 
earth,  "Yet  forty  days  and  Nineveh  shall  be  overthrown." 
But  despite  the  calamity  cackling,  Nineveh  stood — and  so 
did  New  York.  The  Yankee  tars  rigged  up  a  lot  of  rotten 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  345 

scows,  armed  them  with  old  smooth-bores,  and  either  cap- 
tured England's  terrible  seventy-fours  or  drove  them  under 
cover,  while  Washington's  ragged  Continentals  or  Old  Hick- 
ory's coon-skin  riflemen  were  making  the  British  redcoats 
and  Hessian  mercenaries  hard  to  catch.  The  best  defense 
of  a  nation  is  not  ships  of  iron  and  forts  of  stone,  but  hearts 
of  oak.  With  three  million  poverty-stricken  people,  the 
American  eagle  got  in  its  gaffles.  Back  of  the  bird  o'  free- 
dom to-day  are  seventy  millions  of  the  same  fighting  stock, 
and  more  wealth  than  is  owned  by  any  other  nation  in  the 
world.  America  has  passed  thro'  the  fiery  furnace — has 
been  welded  into  one  homogeneous  nation.  In  case  of 
another  war  with  England  that  country  will  not  have  vast 
tribes  of  Indians  and  traitorous  tories  to  assist  her.  She 
will  not  find  one  great  section  of  America  inimical  to  the 
other  and  indifferent  to  national  glory,  as  in  1812.  Lee's 
veterans  will  keep  step  with  Grant's  boys  in  blue — will  set 
foot  as  far  as  who  goes  farthest  in  defense  of  the  old  flag ; 
and  I  here  do  prophesy  that  when  Northern  valor  and 
Southern  chivalry  make  common  cause — tho'  the  sea  be 
black  with  England's  ships  and  her  shores  girt  with  fire — 
the  red  tide  of  war  will  soon  roll  thro'  London's  streets  and 
Old  Glory  be  planted  in  triumph  on  the  Tower. 

I  have  been  called  a  "jingo."  If  by  that  is  meant  that 
I  am  jealous  of  my  country's  honor ;  if  by  that  is  meant 
that  I  am  all  aweary  of  seeing  the  most  powerful  nation 
that  ever  graced  the  mighty  tide  of  time  truckle  like  a 
whipped  spaniel  at  the  feet  of  a  neighbor  it  could  erase 
from  the  map  of  the  world ;  if  by  it  is  meant  that  I  long 
to  hear  the  mighty  bird  o'  freedom  emit  one  scream  that 
will  cause  every  arrogant  monarchy  on  earth  to  hunt  its 
hole,  and  hunt  it  p.  d.  q.,  then  I  am  a  jingo  for  your  Van- 
dyke beard. 

England  is  the  modern  Attilla,  the  Scourge  of  God,  the 
curse  of  the  world.  Her  arrogance  and  insolence  are  only 
equalled  by  her  consciencless  cupidity.  She  is  the  avatar 
of  Discord,  the  abettor  of  Strife,  the  incarnation  of  Greed. 
Her  power  must  be  broken  before  a  permanent  peace  is 
possible.  Not  until  she  is  humbled  in  the  very  dust  need 
the  poet  dream  of  that  Saturnian  age,  when 

"The  war-drum  throbs  no  longer, 
And  the  battle  flags  are  furled 
In  the  parliament  of  man, 
The  federation  of  the  world." 

America  is  the  only  power  that  can,  single-handed  and 
alone,  cut  short  the  career  of  this  professional  filibuster, 


346  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

and  this  duty  seems  to  have  been  assigned  to  us  by  the 
Deity.  Still,  we  might  have  awaited  a  tenable  excuse  for 
hostilities.  The  Monroe  doctrine  is  a  political  back  num- 
ber that  should  cut  no  ice  in  our  national  affairs  to-day. 
Even  when  first  enunciated  and  properly  interpreted,  it 
was  a  piece  of  flamboyant  nonsense  not  worth  fighting 
for.  We  were  induced  to  adopt  it  by  England  herself, 
who  was  jealous  of  other  European  powers,  and  employed 
us  as  a  tool  to  accomplish  her  own  ends — used  as  the 
monkey  did  the  feline's  paw,  to  pull  chestnuts  out  of  the 
fire.  If  Europe  owned  every  foot  of  soil  from  the  Rio 
Bravo  to  Magellan  Strait,  and  from  the  St.  Lawrence  to 
Symme's  Hole,  the  autonomy  of  this  mighty  Yankee  na- 
tion would  be  in  nowise  endangered.  On  our  own  soil 
the  world  in  arms  would  find  us  invincible.  Uncle  Sam 
is  a  giant  who  towers,  like  Saul,  above  his  brethren. 
There  are  not  men  and  money  enough  in  the  great  round 
globe  to  trail  Old  Glory  in  the  dust,  or  tear  one  gleaming 
star  from  Columbia's  diadem.  Seventy  million  Ameri- 
cans, who  know  exactly  what  they  are  here  for,  can  breed 
fighting  stock  to  fill  the  ranks  faster  than  the  combined 
armies  of  the  earth  can  decimate  them.  We  can  build  a 
Chinese  wall  around  these  United  States  and  defend  it, 
from  generation  to  generation,  against  all  the  world,  and 
at  the  same  time  grow  in  population  and  increase  in 
wealth. 

Such  being  the  case,  is  it  not  arrant  folly  to  say  that 
European  colonization  of  other  American  countries  is 
inimical  to  our  peace  and  safety?  If  we  have  managed  to 
exist  all  these  years  with  the  British  possessions  abutting 
our  entire  northern  border,  Spain  holding  the  key  to  the 
Gulf,  and  the  American-hating  Mexican  dynasty  on  the 
southwest,  why  should  we  become  panic-stricken  if  Eng- 
land adds  a  few  malarial  acres  to  the  crown  on  another 
continent?  We  look  idly  on  while  generation  after  gen- 
eration of  Cubans  sacrifice  themselves  in  a  futile  struggle 
for  freedom.  We  see  a  spirited  and  industrious  people 
oppressed  by  a  transatlantic  power  and  shot  to  death  at 
our  very  door,  and  if  one  of  our  citizens  attempts  to  do 
for  them  what  Lafayette  did  for  us  under  similar  condi- 
tions, we  consign  him  to  a  dungeon,  then  contract  a 
double-barreled  bellyache  anent  the  outraged  Goddess  of 
Liberty  because  a  few  thieving  Venezuelans  cannot  agree 
with  Great  Britain  anent  the  Guiana  boundary ! 

It  would  be  infinitely  better  for  us  if  progressive  Euro- 
pean powers  took  forcible  possession  of  all  Central  and 
South  America  and  developed  those  fertile  countries,  in- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  347 

stead  of  leaving  them  to  a  lot  of  lazy,  semi-barbarous  half- 
breeds,  who  are  of  less  importance  in  the  world's  economy 
than  so  many  agency  Indians.  The  idea  that  the  coun- 
tries south  of  us  are  "Sister  Republics,"  whom  it  is  Uncle 
Sam's  duty,  as  a  modern  Sir  Tristram  or  Don  Quixote,  to 
protect  from  the  bities,  is  all  buncombe.  This  is  the  only 
government  of  the  people,  for  the  people  and  by  the  peo- 
ple existing  in  the  Western  World — and  even  it  is  not 
so  to  any  alarming  extent.  There  is  as  much  liberty  in 
Mexico  as  in  any  of  the  so-called  republics  further  south ; 
yet  Diaz  is  as  supreme  on  Mexican  soil  as  the  Czar  at  St. 
Petersburg.  The  average  South  American  "citizen" 
couldn't  distinguish  between  the  elective  franchise  and  an 
ichthyosaurian.  Oligarchies,  cabals  and  dictators  rule  the 
roost,  and  whenever  a  man  becomes  rich  enough  to  own 
two  dogs  and  an  antiquated  gun  he  revolts  and  grasps 
the  reins  of  government.  The  people  of  those  "republics" 
are  divided  into  two  classes — those  on  rule  or  ruin  bent 
and  those  content  to  sit  in  the  sun  and  roll  corn-shuck 
cigarettes  until  an  opportunity  occurs  to  steal  something 
which  they  are  not  too  tired  to  carry. 

In  case  of  war  we  want  no  alliance  with  the  so-called 
republics  of  the  south.  We  would  have  to  provide  them 
with  guns  and  grub,  and  neither  their  fighting  ability  nor 
their  faithlessness  justifies  the  expense.  They  are  first- 
class  assassins,  but  very  poor  soldiers.  A  British  regi- 
ment would  go  through  them  like  a  thunderbolt  through 
a  swarm  of  gnats.  Had  the  famous  Light  Brigade 
charged  the  mobilized  armies  of  South  America  it  would 
not  have  lost  a  dozen  men ;  but  the  chances  are  that  every 
horse  would  have  been  stolen  from  under  it. 

It  is  urged  that  an  attempt  on  our  part  to  enforce  the 
Cleveland-Olney  interpretation  of  the  Monroe  doctrine 
would  bring  the  continental  powers  of  Europe  to  Eng- 
land's aid.  That  is  beyond  the  pale  of  the  probabilities. 
Spain,  France,  Holland  and  some  others  do  not  like  the 
Monroe  doctrine  a  little  bit ;  but  none  of  them  are  anxious 
for  a  "go"  with  the  giant  of  the  Occident.  Uncle  Sam 
ran  a  bluff  on  both  France  and  Spain,  and  made  England 
herself  sing  small  while  the  Southern  Confederacy  was 
in  the  very  heyday  of  its  power.  Russia  could  not  be 
drawn  into  an  anti-American  alliance,  for  she  doesn't 
care  an  Austindam  about  the  Monroe  doctrine ;  but  while 
America  was  entertaining  Western  Europe,  the  Great 
White  Czar,  by  pushing  his  fortunes  in  the  Far  East, 
would  cut  out  some  lively  work  for  his  neighbors  nearer 
home.  France,  Spain,  et  al.,  will  give  Great  Britain  theiii 


348  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

moral  support,  then  sit  on  the  fence  and  wait  for  their 
slice  of  Turkey,  while  discussing  the  balance  of  power. 
Continental  Europe  has  troubles  of  her  own,  and  John 
Bull  will  have  to  tell  his  to  Brother  Jonathan. 

If  war  is  the  result  of  the  present  complication  the 
world  will  be  none  the  worse  for  it ;  but  Grover  Cleveland, 
like  the  fool  who  fired  the  Ephesian  Dome,  will  be  damned 
to  everlasting  fame.  The  blood  of  every  American  patriot 
who  falls  before  the  batteries  of  Great  Britain  will  be 
upon  his  head.  After  being  for  years  John  Bull's  man 
Friday,  the  subservient  tool  of  DoAvning  street,  he  blos- 
soms forth  as  facile  princeps  of  the  genus  "jingo."  Hither- 
to his  Anglomania  has  been  offensive  to  the  very  mug- 
wumps ;  now  his  Americanism  slops  over  like  a  toy  bucket 
in  a  cloudburst.  After  truckling  to  England  in  all  things 
like  a  slave  to  his  master,  he  hurries  us  into  war  with  that 
country  without  provocation  or  excuse — puts  Uncle  Sam 
in  the  position  of  the  fool  jackass  who  kicked  before  he 
was  spurred.  Because  Great  Britain  desired  to  preserve 
the  Hawaiian  monarchy,  Cleveland  exceeded  his  author- 
ity in  a  feverish  attempt  to  degrade  Old  Glory  and 
strangle  the  new-born  republic.  He  ignored  the  Monroe 
doctrine  when  it  was  flagrantly  violated  under  his  very 
nose  in  the  case  of  Nicaragua,  then  placed  upon  it  a 
strained  and  hitherto  unheard  of  construction  as  a  pretext 
for  making  a  flamboyant  war-talk  that  by  appealing  to 
American  patriotism  would  cause  his  political  errors  to  be 
forgiven  and  forgotten. 


THE    COMMON    COURTESAN. 
A  GLIMPSE  OF  GEHENNA. 

I  published  an  article  in  the  February  number  of  the 
Iconoclast  entitled  "Woman's  Wickedness,"  which  gave 
many  supersensitive  people  a  shock  from  which  they  have 
not  yet  recovered.  I  have  no  particular  objection  to  kill- 
ing that  class  of  cattle,  for  I  believe  the  good  God  would 
be  glad  to  get  the  rickety  breed  exterminated;  but  I 
would  not  ambuscade  even  a  canting  hypocrite  or  sheep- 
killing  dog,  so  I  here  put  up  a  sign  warning  the  whole 
pestiferous  crew  of  Pharisees  to  dive  no  deeper  here, 
under  pain  of  death,  and  heaven  alone  knows  what  here- 
after. I  am  going  to  indulge  in  some  plain  talk,  and  those 
who  wear  their  modesty  on  their  sleeve  will  please  betake 
themselves  to  a  milder  diet — one  of  Sam  Jones'  aesthetic 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  349 

sermons  or  the  quack  doctor  ads.  in  the  daily  papers,  for 
instance. 

In  my  former  article  I  discussed  how  courtesans  are 
made ;  here  I  propose  to  consider  how  they  can  be  re- 
claimed. Next  to  learning  how  to  do  a  thing  is  learning 
how  not  to  do  it.  The  world  has  had  a  vast  and  varied 
experience  with  the  negative  side  of  the  question  and 
seems  to  have  settled  it  to  its  satisfaction  that  the  only 
way  to  lift  a  woman  out  of  hell  is  to  bar  the  door  of  egress 
and  shoot  fireballs  at  her  through  the  gratings ;  that  the 
only  way  to  persuade  her  to  leave  off  her  sinning  is  to 
inform  her  that,  though  she  repent  in  sackcloth  and 
ashes,  she  will  never  be  forgiven;  that  the  only  method 
of  elevating  the  fallen  woman  is  to  get  after  her  with 
scorpion  whips  when  she  breaks  away  from  the  brothel 
and  scourge  her  back  again !  This  system  of  moral  thera- 
peutics is  not  without  its  advantages ;  if  it  seldom  cures, 
it  at  least  kills  quicker  than  any  other  that  could  be  de- 
vised, thus  abbreviating  the  misery  of  the  patient. 

It  were  as  idle  to  expect  to  eliminate  Prostitution  as  to 
extirpate  Poverty  and  Greed.  Just  so  long  as  Lust  runs 
riot  in  the  veins  of  Adam's  sons,  women  will  be  degraded 
and  debauched.  Just  so  long  as  Want  and  Wretchedness 
stalk  like  grisly  phantoms  through  the  earth  women  will 
be  found  who  will  brazenly  barter  their  souls  for  gold  or 
for  bread.  There  are  women  who  are  wantons  by  nature ; 
whom  no  wealth,  education  or  moral  surroundings  can 
withhold  from  evil. 

"But  virtue,  as  it  never  will  be  mov'd, 
Though  lewdness  court  it  in  a  shape  of  heaven, 
So  lust,  though  to  a  radiant  angel  link'd, 
Will  sate  itself  in  a  celestial  bed 
And  prey  on  garbage." 

It  were  idle  to  talk  of  "reforming"  women  who  never 
possessed  the  faintest  conception  of  modesty;  in  whom 
the  brutish  nature  dominates  the  divine;  but  these  form 
a  very  inconsiderable  portion  of  that  vast  array  upon  whose 
brows  blazes  the  scarlet  brand  of  the  courtesan.  A  vast 
majority  of  these  unfortunates  feel  their  degradation  as 
no  male  malefactor  ever  felt  his  disgrace ;  would,  were  it 
possible,  wash  the  stains  from  their  souls  with  their  heart's 
blood.  Every  year  of  the  world  thousands  of  them,  unable 
to  further  bear  their  weight  of  shame,  to  longer  endure  the 
fierce  scourgings  of  the  fire-whips  of  an  avenging  con- 
science, burst  the  gates  of  death,  hide  in  the  grave  from  a 
cold  world's  bitter  scorn.  Other  escape  there  is  none; 


350  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

society  will  not  receive  them  back;  its  doors  are  irrevo- 
cably closed  to  them.  They  may  knock,  but  it  will  not  be 
opened  unto  them ;  they  may  come  on  their  knees,  groping 
their  way  through  penitential  tears,  but  they  will  be  spurned 
from  its  portals  with  foul  reproach.  Society  made  them 
what  they  are;  it  now  sits  in  judgment  upon  them  and  de- 
clares that  they  shall  be  no  other.  From  the  lips  of  the 
stern  judge  are  never  heard  those  words,  the  sweetest  that 
ever  fell  on  mortal  ears,  divinest  sentence  that  ever  passed 
the  lips  of  God  or  man,  "Go  and  sin  no  more."  Other  crim- 
inals reform.  The  thief  becomes  an  honest  man  ;  the  forger 
lives  down  his  crime ;  the  manslayer  purifies  his  bloody 
hands  with  a  life-time  of  noble  deeds ;  but  once  a  courtesan 
always  a  courtesan.  There  is  no  place  in  all  the  wide  world 
but  the  bagnio  for  the  woman  who  has  once  erred, — no 
matter  how  youthful  or  inexperienced,  how  foul  her  betrayal. 

"No;   gayer  insects  fluttering  by 
Ne'er  droop  the  wing  o'er  those  .that  die, 
And  lovlier  things  have  mercy  shown 
To  every  failing  but  their  own, 
And  every  woe  a  tear  can  claim 
Except  an  erring  sister's  shame." 

*      *      * 

Those  good  people  who  drag  her  hence  but  plunge  her 
into  tortures  beyond  her  powers  of  endurance ;  but  place 
her  on  exhibition  for  the  world  to  mock,  set  her  up  as  a 
mark  for  the  cold  unmoving  finger  of  scorn.  Those  who 
can  stand  the  ordeal  are  seldom  worth  saving ;  are  women 
scarce  conscious  of  their  degradation,  mere  animals  to 
whom  all  life  is  alike — who  care  little  whether  they  take 
their  food  from  the  hand  of  a  boorish  husband  or  a  dash- 
ing paramour.  Crazed  by  the  world's  contempt,  by  its 
brutal  scorn,  trampled  beneath  the  feet  of  women  not 
worthy  to  serve  them  as  waiting  maids  or  scullions,  the 
most  rush  back  into  the  old  evil  life  and  madly  plunge  to 
more  fearful  depths. 

What  salvation  can  be  devised  for  the  thousands  of 
noble  women  who  have  fallen  benealh  the  terrible  ban  of 
public  opinion?  There  is  only  one  way:  to  reform  public 
opinion  itself;  to  lift  from  these  daughters  of  shame  the 
dead  weight  that  is  crushing  them  down  to  the  deepest 
hell ;  to  throw  open  to  them  the  gates  of  the  upper  as  well 
as  of  the  nether  world. 

Such  a  task  will  appear  to  many  almost  as  hopeless  as 
an  attempt  to  change  the  ocean's  tides  or  alter  the  law 
of  gravitation ;  but  such  forget  that  Falsehood  and  Folly 
fade  before  Truth  like  night's  black  shadows  before  the 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  351 

faintest  light  ray  that  trembles  from  the  great  sun.  The 
world  is  naturally  honest,  just,  pitiful;  its  attitude  toward 
the  fallen  woman  is  an  unnatural  one,  the  result  of  centuries 
of  false  education  and  fatuous  religion.  Pessimist  as  I  am 
called,  I  still  have  sufficient  faith  in  my  fellowmen  to  believe 
that  they  will  not  persist  in  a  grievous,  a  brutal  crime,  when 
they  can  once  be  made  to  see  that  it  is  such. 

But  who  is  to  convince  them?  The  press?  The  pulpit? 
Is  not  the  present  deplorable  condition  the  result  of  their 
teaching?  They  have  created  a  false,  a  vicious  public  opin- 
ion, before  which  they  now  cower  and  tremble.  Is  there 
a  minister  living  with  the  courage  to  urge  his  parishioners 
to  throw  open  their  homes  to  and  receive  on  a  footing  of 
social  equality  the  repentant  Magdalen?  Is  there  a  daily 
paper  between  the  two  oceans  that  would  dare  make  such 
a  suggestion, — that  would,  even  for  a  fat  bribe,  state  in 
its  editorial  columns  that  the  most  abandoned  courtesan 
that  ever  made  night  hideous  with  her  drunken  brawling, 
may  become  the  peer  of  the  President's  wife  by  discarding 
her  evil  ways  and  thenceforth  living  a  life  of  purity  and 
nobleness?  Not  one!  Yet  is  it  not  true?  If  not,  why  not? 
If  there  is  any  truth  in  our  religion,  the  portals  of  heaven 
will  fly  wide  open  at  her  approach;  yet  we  close  the  door  in 
her  face!  Almighty  God  thinks  her  good  enough  to  asso- 
ciate with  the  Virgin  Mary,  yet  we  raise  a  devil  of  a  row 
if  we  see  her  talking  across  the  back  fence  to  our  daughters 
or  wives!  The  Creator  of  the  Cosmos  is  waiting  to  crown 
her  amid  the  glad  acclaim  of  the  heavenly  host;  yet  our 
nice  American  gentleman  does  not  consider  that  she  is 
good  enough  to  wear  his  name  and  cook  his  hash!  His 
honor  would  be  irremediably  smirched  by  such  an  alliance! 
Yet  if  he  can  but  toll  her  'back  into  the  old  life  and  be  one 
of  a  hundred  to  visit  her  foul  bed,  his  honor  will  not  show 
even  a  fly-speck — will  shine  like  a  new  tin  pan  at  a  Repub- 
lican powwow!  Curious  this  thing  male  bipeds  are  wont  to 

call  their  honor! 

*         *         * 

The  world,  ever  gross  despite  centuries  of  civilization, 
makes  no  distinction  in  illicit  intercourse  of  the  sexes.  To 
it  all  women  found  even  one  step  outside  the  prescribed 
path  are  equally  vile,  alike  deserving  unmitigated  censure; 
yet  from  the  highest  to  the  lowest  of  those  so  outlawed  and 
placed  beneath  society's  ban,  is  a  sweep  as  far  from  the 
highest  heaven  as  to  the  deepest  hell.  Some  of  the  noblest, 
grandest  women  ever  sent  into  this  dreary  world  by  a 
beneficent  God  to  brighten  its  cimmerian  gloom  are  known 
to  have  lived  on  very  intimate  terms  with  the  men  they 


352  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

loved,  and  that,  too,  without  the  formality  of  securing  soci- 
ety's sanction.  Love  is  a  celestial  flame  that  has  not  yet 
been  educated  to  burn  ever  according  to  terrestrial  law. 
Sometimes  it  will  overlap  such  fences  as  secular  statutes 
and  religious  dogmas  and  set  the  world  on  fire!  Many  a 
noble  woman  has  become  a  man's  mistress  because  she 
could  neither  become  his  wife  nor  trample  her  heart  be- 
neath her  feet  at  the  dictates  of  society.  With  some 
women  love  is  a  higher  law,  before  which  canons  of  church 
and  State  shrivel  into  nothingness.  No  saintly  anathema, 
no  fiat  of  society  can  disturb  their  devotion.  Though  the 
world  reel,  the  heavens  fall  and  black  chaos  come  again, 
they  will  cling  closer  to  the  shrine  upon  which  they  have 
cast  their  hearts.  Of  these  we  need  not  speak  further  here. 
Society  has  no  power  over  them  for  good  or  ill.  From 
its  fallible  judgment  they  calmly  and  confidently  appeal 
to  an  infallible  God. 

For  those  at  the  other  extreme,  the  law  of  whose  lives 
is  Lust  instead  of  Love,  children  of  the  slums,  the  spawn  of 
criminals,  who  were  courtesans  from  the  very  cradle,  there 
is  no  hope.  There  is  no  method  by  which  those  now  ex- 
istent can  be  successfully  reached.  All  that  we  can  hope  to 
do,  is,  by  improving  society,  to  curtail  the  class  which 
breeds  them.  This  cannot  be  done  by  dogmatizating  or 
founding  ''homes  for  fallen  women;"  we  must  do  our 
most  effective  work  in  our  industrial  system.  When  the 
laborer's  lot  is  made  easier;  when  it  becomes  possible  for 
all  men  and  women  to  earn  an  honest  living,  society  will 
have  fewer  crimes  and  courtesan-breeding  "dregs." 

It  is  that  vast  class  of  women,  once  as  pure  as  the  snow 
but  now  foul  as  the  hags  of  hell,  yet  who  still  retain  a 
shadow  of  that  "divine  shame"  which  distinguishes  human- 
ity from  the  brute,  and  who  long  to  return  to  the  upper 
world, — to  win  back  the  respect  they  have  forfeited — that 
chiefly  concerns  us  here.  Naturally  the  first  step  would  be 
to  so  reform  society  that  it  will  not  year  by  year  pour 
thousands  upon  thousands  of  fresh  recruits  into  the  ranks 
of  the  fallen.  Here,  too,  the  need  of  industrious  reform 
becomes  apparent.  Bitter  poverty  is  as  potent  to  make 
prostitutes  of  young  women  as  thieves  of  young  men. 
Make  it  possible  for  every  young  woman  to  earn  an  honest 
and  respectable  living  and  you  will  save  more  souls  than 
have  been  garnered  by  all  the  priests  and  preachers  from 
Melchizedek  to  Sam  Jones.  You  make  it  possible  for 
thousands  of  young  women  to  choose  between  good  and 
evil  whose  only  alternative  now  of  degradation  is  death. 
You  prepare  a  field  in  which  it  is  possible  for  moral  max- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  353 

itns  to  take  root.  It  is  useless  to  hurl  homilies  at  people 
suffering  for  food  and  fuel  while  the  devil  is  clinking  his 
gold  pieces  and  dazzling  their  eyes  with  gems. 

But  the  most  effective  method  of  checking  an  evil  that 
threatens  to  engulf  the  world,  is  the  easiest;  it  is  to  repeat 
to  every  repentant  sinner  the  words  of  the  Saviour:  "Go 
and  sin  no  more."  Let  the  past  perish  and  be  forgotten: 
we  will  not  judge  you  by  what  you  have  been  but  by  what 
you  are.  Come  out  of  the  depths!  If  the  God  who  made 
you  forgives  your  transgressions,  can  we  petty  creatures, 
resting  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand,  annul  his  judgments? 
If  he  says  that  your  repentant  tears  have  washed  you  white 
as  snow,  shall  we  appeal  from  his  great  court  to  that  of 
Mrs.  Grundy? 


THE  "COUNTESS"  CASTELLANE. 

And  now  a  tale  of  woe  comes  drifting  across  the  dark 
blue  sea — another  American  woman  who  wedded  a  titled 
nonentity  is,  like  Niobe,  all  tears.  Miss  Anna  Gould  is  the 
latest  American  girl  to  learn  that  the  European  "nobility" 
is  not  composed  of  noble  men — the  new-made  "countess" 
is  already  pining  for  her  own  country.  I  expected  it.  I 
confided  to  Anna  that  her  "Count"  was  utterly  no  ac- 
count, and  advised  her  to  use  him  for  fish  bait  instead  of 
for  breeding  purposes.  I  counselled  her  to  give  the  mis- 
erable tramp  a  cold  "hand-out"  and  the  marble  heart.  I 
implored  her  to  consider  her  latter  end  and  have  no  deal- 
ings with  titled  dudes.  I  suggested  that  she  spill  her  gild- 
ed affections  on  some  honest  American  mechanic  who 
could  be  trusted  to  carry  in  the  coal,  come  home  reason- 
ably sober,  avoid  the  company  of  courtesans  and  sure- 
thing  gamblers  and  love  her  as  long  as  there  was  any  of 
her  left.  But  it's  a  sheer  waste  of  advice  to  give  it  to  a 
woman.  Anna  found  the  "Count"  on  the  matrimonial 
bargain-counter  and  gathered  him  in — paid  for  him,  much 
as  one  might  purchase  a  hairless  Mexican  pup.  And  the 
undiscriminating  dailies  fairly  chortled  in  their  joy.  They 
informed  the  world  that  the  union  was  a  love  match  pure 
and  simple — as  tho'  the  average  daily  editor  could  dis- 
tinguish between  a  Cupid-shaft  and  an  affection  of  the 
kidneys !  They  slobbered  over  the  young  turtle  doves 
until  the  bridal  wreath  floated  in  the  lather,  and  prattled 
of  the  "holy  union  6f  two  young  hearts."  Rodents !  And 
while  sassiety  and  the  press  was  slopping  over,  the  Cas- 
tellane  family  was  recalcitrating  like  mule  colts  because 


354  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

Miss  Gould  would  not  turn  over  her  entire  fortune  to  her 
fiance — even  threatened  to  break  off  the  alliance  at  the 
very  steps  of  the  altar.  But  the  Goulds  knew  the  market 
quotations  of  expired  patents  of  nobility,  kept  a  stiff  upper 
lip,  and  "the  great  house  of  Castellane"  grew  hungry  and 
came  off  its  perch  with  the  frigid  hauteur  of  a  lame  parrot 
making  a  sneak  on  a  rotten  peanut.  Anna  captured  the 
erstwhile  coronet — encumbered  by  an  early  morning  ac- 
cident, such  as  will  sometimes  happen  in  respectable  fam- 
ilies. And  now  we  are  getting  the  second  chapter  of  this 
"true  love1'  tale.  According  to  apparently  reliable  reports, 
the  "Countess"  Castellane  is  one  of  the  most  miserable 
of  mortals.  Ze  count — without  a  coronet — is  blowing  in 
her  boodle  on  bawds  and  boozers  while  neglecting  and 
humiliating  his  wife  in  every  possible  way.  So  brutal  in 
his  treatment,  so  ostentatious  his  neglect  of  the  woman 
who  has  paid  for  the  very  clothes  he  wears  and  the  bread 
in  his  belly,  that  even  the  heartless  cosmopolites  of  the 
wickedest  city  in  the  world  profess  to  pity  her.  I  have 
tried  to  be  sorry  for  the  "countess ;"  but  I  can't.  I  am  in- 
dignant that  a  scrawny  little  French  flee,  who  insults  his 
own  country  by  pretensions  of  "nobility"  in  the  days  of 
the  Republic,  and  whose  forefathers  were  kicked  across 
the  frontier  like  so  many  sheep-killing  curs  by  the  out- 
raged peasantry  should  dare  mistreat  a  countrywomen  of 
mine;  but  reason  tells  me  it  is  retributive  justice.  When 
the  daughter  of  a  mouse-trap-maker  and  map-peddler  be- 
comes too  purse-proud  to  marry  an  American  sovereign, 
and  seeks  among  the  syphilitic  dudes  of  a  fallen  dynasty 
a  companion  for  her  bed,  she  deserves  to  suffer  the  tor- 
tures of  the  damned.  It  is  a  grim  satisfaction  to  know  that 
most  of  these  title-hunting  Yankee  dunderheads  get  their 
just  dues.  If  any  American  woman  has  wedded  a  Euro- 
pean "nobleman"  and  "lived  happily  ever  afterwards,"  I 
have  yet  to  hear  of  it.  Social  clap-trap  and  sacerdotal 
ceremony  cannot  sanctify  a  contract  to  commit  a  crime 
against  nature,  nor  purge  "a  marriage  of  convenience"  of 
the  taint  of  prostitution.  The  woman  who  barters  her 
beauty  for  a  title,  her  soul  for  social  distinction  is  even 
more  culpable  than  the  courtesan  of  Boiler  avenue,  whose 
fee  is  a  dollar  bill.  In  both  cases  it  is  cold-blooded  bar- 
ter and  sale,  but  to  the  crime  of  a  loveless  marriage  is 
added  the  vice  of  hypocrisy.  The  bawd  may  be  driven 
to  sell  her  body  for  bread,  but  the  title-hunter  sacrifices 
her  purity  to  gratify  a  prurient  ambition.  It  is  scarce 
to  be  expected  that  women  who  purchase  their  marital 
companions  should  make  model  wives — that  is  not  a 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  355 

clause  in  the  contract.  The  penurious  "nobleman''  mar- 
ries such  a  woman  not  because  he  cares  for  her  com- 
panionship, but  because  he  needs  money  which  he  is  too 
indolent  to  earn  and  too  cowardly  to  steal.  Having  given 
her  his  name  in  exchange  for  a  grub-stake,  he  feels  that 
he  has  performed  his  part  of  the  contract,  has  discharged 
his  entire  duty.  He  understands  full  well  that  the  woman 
wedded  him  solely  for  his  title — that  it  was  social  ambi- 
tion instead  of  love's  passion  that  brought  her  to  his  bed 
— and  he  heartily  despises  her,  as  all  hypocrites  do  their 
fellow  humbugs.  There  is  no  contempt  so  profound,  no 
hatred  so  implacable  as  that  with  which  the  impoverished 
patrician  regards  the  aspiring  parvenu ;  and  scarce  has  the 
epithalamium  ceased  ere  this  feeling  begins  to  make  itself 
manifest.  The  man  who  weds  a  woman  solely  for  her 
wealth  cannot  possibly  possess  the  instincts  of  a  gentle- 
man. Tho'  he  wear  a  crown,  he  is  at  heart  a  human  hy- 
ena, capable  of  any  crime  that  requires  no  courage — just 
the  kind  of  a  creature  to  find  a  fiendish  joy  in  torturing 
the  helpless,  in  making  a  woman's  life  a  hell.  All  the 
manhood  which  the  "older  nobility"  of  Europe  ever  pos- 
sessed was  bred  out  by  selfish  marriages  and  shameless 
bawdry  years  ago.  Most  royal  families  were  originally  es- 
tablished by  the  plunder  and  oppression  of  the  weak  by 
the  strong.  The  "nobility"  was  'composed  of  the  obse- 
quious servants  of  marauding  sovereigns,  the  hired  as- 
sassins of  crowned  hoodlums,  its  ranks  regularly  re- 
cruited from  professional  panders  and  the  spawn  of  pros- 
titutes. For  centuries  the  European  "nobility"  was  but  a 
foul  cesspool  into  which  emptied  the  social  sewer.  The 
throne  was  surrounded  by  "ennobled"  bastards  and  shame- 
less bawds  swayed  the  sovereign's  sceptre.  "An  evil  tree 
cannot  bring  forth  good  fruit."  Idle  lives,  vicious  habits 
and  inherited  disease  have  degraded  the  present  "nobil- 
ity" below  even  the  brutish  level  of  its  progenitors — has 
transformed  it  into  a  disreputable  omnium-gatherum  of 
wife-beaters  and  sure-thing  gamblers,  scorbutic  cowards 
and  brazen  cuckolds.  Here  and  there  may  be  found  a  fam- 
ily, lately  ennobled,  that  has  not  yet  become  irremediably 
rotten ;  but  the  tendency  is  almost  invariably  downward 
— each  succeeding  generation  drifting  further  from  the 
distinctive  virtues  of  manhood.  And  it  was  one  of  these 
hoodlums  that  Miss  Gould  bought  for  a  husband.  Her 
marital  experience  is  that  of  most  American  women  who 
have  traded  cash  for  coronets.  The  "Countess"  Castel- 
lane  and  the  "Princess"  Colonna  should  retire  to  the 
woodshed  and  mingle  their  tears.  They  might  retrieve 


356  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

their  mistakes  by  employing  a  half-grown  "coon"  to 
bump  together  the  empty  pates  of  their  titled  nincom- 
poops until  they  pop  like  a  pair  of  painted  bladders,  then 
marry  good  Texas  Democrats  and  rear  a  crop  of  boys 
with  brains  in  their  heads  and  iron  in  their  blood. 


THE  MORMONS  OF  MEXICO. 

After  suffering  unremitting  persecution  at  the  hands 
of  religious  bigots  for  half  a  century,  the  Mormons  are 
moving  into  Mexico,  where,  I  am  informed,  there  is  little 
inclination  to  interfere  with  their  polygamous  practices. 
And  they  are  repaying  the  hospitality  of  our  sister  repub- 
lic by  transforming  her  arid  wastes  into  fruitful  farms. 
A  dispatch  announces,  as  an  item  of  news,  that  "they  are 
industrious  and  law-abiding  citizens  who  are  aiding  won- 
derfully in  the  development  of  the  country."  The  same 
could  be  said  of  the  Mormons  in  America  so  long  as  the 
religious  fanatics  could  be  kept  off  their  collars.  The 
United  States  never  had  better  citizens  than  were  the 
Mormons  so  long  as  they  were  let  alone.  Their  industry, 
thrift  and  penchant  for  attending  strictly  to  their  own 
business  has  passed  into  a  proverb.  This  much  may  be 
said  or  them  without  endorsing  their  religious  doctrines. 
I  have  ever  been  undecided  whether  Joe  Smith  was  a 
faker  or  a  fool ;  but  certain  am  I  that  the  brutal  treatment 
accorded  him  and  his  followers  in  this  country  should 
call  a  blush  of  shame  to  the  cheek  of  every  American  citi- 
zen. It  was  a  crime  unparalleled  since  the  persecution  of 
the  Quakers  by  the  Puritans ;  was  committed  by  a  coun- 
try posing  as  the  refuge  of  the  world's  oppressed — the 
chief  exponent  of  individual  liberty.  There  was  not  the 
slightest  danger  that  polygamy  would  become  a  serious 
menace  to  American  morals ;  the  attempt  to  engraft  it 
permanently  upon  Anglo-Saxon  civilization  were  as  futile 
as  the  labors  of  the  Del  Rio  idiot  to  convince  men  who 
have  circumnavigated  the  globe,  that  it  is  flat  as  a  cellar 
floor.  Instead  of  warring  upon  the  seraglios  of  the  Latter 
Day  Saints,  we  should  have  considered  ways  and  means 
for  the  abolishment  of  our  own  bagnios.  We  should  have 
gotten  the  beam  out  of  our  own  eye  before  going  for  the 
mote  in  the  optic  of  the  Mormon.  The  Church  of  the 
Latter  Day  Saints  would  have  quickly  perished  had  we  let 
it  alone.  A  religious  craze  thrives  on  persecution — "the 
blood  of  martyrs  is  the  seed  of  the  church."  Having  mur- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  357 

dered  the  founder  of  the  new  faith,  we  drove  his  follow- 
ers— men,  women  and  children — into  the  snow-clad,  bliz- 
zard-cursed western  waste.  It  was  not  a  social  convulsion 
that  expelled  the  Mormons  from  the  older  states,  but  re- 
ligious intolerance  pure  and  simple.  New  York,  where 
Joe  Smith  began  his  ministry,  suffered  a  free-love  colony 
to  exist  in  its  midst  in  peaceful  prosperity ;  but  the  Mor- 
mons were  aggressive  proselytizers  and  thereby  evoked 
the  undying  enmity  of  other  religious  sects.  Polygamy, 
as  subsequently  practiced,  appears  to  have  had  no  place  in 
the  Mormon  cult  until  after  the  murder  of  Joe  Smith ;  but 
they  were  hated  and  harried  as  vindictively  by  their 
Christian  neighbors  before  as  after  it  became  an  accepted 
tenet  of  their  faittu  They  were  expelled,  not  because  of 
their  immorality,  but  because  of  difference  with  their 
neighbors  anent  religious  dogma.  They  abandoned  their 
magnificent  city  of  Nauvoo,  their  fruitful  farms  and  pleas- 
ant homes  in  Illinois  and  Missouri,  and  tramped  reso- 
lutely a  thousand  miles  into  the  wilderness,  hoping  that 
they  might  there  enjoy  that  religious  liberty  to  which 
they  were  entitled  as  American  citizens.  Tireless  industry 
soon  retrieved  their  fallen  fortunes,  but  with  prosperity 
came  the  development  of  polygamy.  Utah  was  at  once  de- 
nounced as  a  moral  plague-spot  demanding  heroic  treat- 
ment, and  the  Federal  officials  became  the  agents  of  the 
new  persecution.  I  rejoice  that  polygamy  exists  no  longer 
on  American  soil ;  but  the  remedy  adopted  was  infinitely 
worse  than  the  disease.  Religious  liberty  and  local  self- 
government  are  the  very  pillars  of  this  Republic,  and  the 
integrity  of  both  was  fiercely  assailed  in  our  dealings  with 
the  Latter  Day  Saints. 

It  is  questionable  whether  we  have  done  the  mono- 
gamic  doctrine  any  real  good  by  the  persecution  of  a  few 
polygamists.  Our  crusade  sufficed  to  call  the  world's  at- 
tention to  the  fact  that,  while  dominated  by  the  polyga- 
mous Saints,  Utah  was  a  veritable  Arcadia,  practically 
free  of  pimps  and  prostitutes,  bloated  millionaires  and 
groveling  mendicants — strange  contrast  to  those  com- 
munities where  our  religious  ideas  and  code  of  social 
ethics  have  long  been  paramount.  It  has  served  to  remind 
untold  millions  that,  while  accepting  the  Hebrew  proph- 
ets and  patriarchs  as  God's  anointed,  we  have  persistent- 
ly hounded  as  public  enemies  a  people  who  moulded  their 
social  life  by  those  divine  models.  True,  Abraham,  Isaac 
and  Jacob  lived  in  an  age  of  general  ignorance ;  but  if  they 
had  Graeco-Roman  wrestling  matches  with  angels,  fed 
those  feathered  songsters  and  washed  their  feet,  we  may 


358  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

presume  that  they  learned  how  many  female  bosses  is 
permitted  to  the  average  pilgrim — whether  polygamy  is 
displeasing  to  the  Lord.  Of  course  the  old  dispensation 
has  passed  away;  still  it  is  difficult  to  imagine  the  Al- 
mighty permitting  a  sawed-off  dude  like  King  Solomon  to 
have  a  thousand  pretty  women  and  compelling  a  fine 
lusty  animal  like  the  Rev.  Jehovah  Boanerges  Cranfill  to 
worry  along  with  one. 

Furthermore,  the  anti-Mormon  crusade  has  set  the  an- 
thropologists to  prattling  again;  and,  shocking  as  it  may 
seem  to  our  modern  civilization  and  its  monogamic  ideas, 
they  are  inclined  to  agree  with  Solomon  that  it  is  difficult 
for  a  man  to  get  too  much  of  a  really  good  thing.  Science 
does  not  show  much  respect  for  modern  creeds  and  cults, 
environment  and  education;  but  tells  us  plainly  that  man 
is  naturally  a  polygamous  animal — even  intimates  that  a 
thousand  years  of  monogamy,  strictly  enforced,  would 
sweep  the  human  race  from  the  face  of  the  earth.  Pro- 
gressive physicians  inform  us  sub  rosa,  of  course — that 
loss  of  virility  is  the  reward  of  male  virtue — even  pre- 
scribe an  occasional  violation  of  moral  law  as  a  preventa- 
tive  of  impotency.  This  is  indeed  a  serious  matter,  and  I 
submit  it  to  my  brother  ministers  and  humbly  ask :  What 
are  we  going  to  do  about  it?  Does  the  Seventh  Com- 
mandment repeal  the  imperative  order  issued  to  Adam 
and  Eve  to  be  fruitful  and  multiply?  That  is  a  knotty 
theological  problem  which  should  be  decided  without  de- 
lay, and  I  move  that  it  be  referred  to  the  faculty  of  Baylor 
University. 

Monogamy  has  become  with  us  a  sacred  thing,  the  cita- 
del of  social  purity;  and  I  am  in  nowise  responsible  for 
the  demoralizing  example  of  King  David,  the  beloved  of 
the  Lord,  nor  for  the  conclusions  of  science  that  it  runs 
counter  to  the  law  of  man's  life. 

If  the  conclusions  of  the  anthropologists  be  correct — 
which  I  am  not  prepared  to  admit,  and  it  were  presump- 
tion to  deny — the  question  naturally  arises :  Were  it  bet- 
ter for  the  race  considered  either  morally  or  physically, 
that  man  should  have  a  plurality  of  wives,  or  only  one  le- 
gal mate  and  many  mistresses?  that  he  should  legitima- 
tize all  his  children  and  accord  them  a  father's  care,  or 
disown  a  part — turn  them  adrift  to  grow  up  as  best  they 
may  beneath  a  social  blight?  Were  it  better  that  their 
mothers  have  a  legal  claim  upon  him  for  life,  and  feel  that 
they  are  within  the  pale  of  respectability,  or  remain  the 
mere  creatures  of  his  caprice  and  suffer  a  social  ostracism 
that  is  more  demoralizing  than  the  worst  of  marriage  sys- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  359 

terns?  The  seraglio  or  the  bagnio — which  shall  it  be,  oh 
brother  ministers  mine?  Is  the  courtesan  more  desirable 
to  our  civilization  than  the  concubine?  We  have  answered 
this  important  question  in  one  way,  the  Mormons  in 
another.  I  believe  that  the  Gentiles  are  in  the  right.  I 
opine  that  a  handful  of  women,  who  are  true  wives,  are 
worth  more  than  untold  millions  living  lives  of  legalized 
concubinage.  I  believe  that  of  monogamic  marriage  were 
born  the  bravest  and  brainest  men  that  ever  fronted  des- 
tiny. Still,  candor  compels  the  admission  that  the  polyga- 
mists  have  both  science  and  the  cumulative  wisdom  of 
sixty  centuries  on  their  side,  while  we  are  little  more  than 
experimentalists,  who  may  be  riding  to  a  fall.  In  the  dis- 
cussion of  all  problems  of  such  import,  we  should  be  rig- 
idly honest  with  both  our  opponents  and  ourselves.  In 
considering  the  relation  of  the  sexes  we  should  remember 
that  marriage,  the  most  sacred  of  our  human  institutions, 
had  its  origin  in  selfish  lust.  When  men  attempt  to  live 
together  in  communities  that  they  may  be  mutually  help- 
ful, they  must,  perforce,  make  rules  for  the  measurement 
and  conservation  of  individual  rights.  The  institution  of 
marriage,  like  the  law  against  theft,  was  originally  in- 
tended to  guarantee  to  each  male  member  of  the  com- 
munity peaceable  possession  and  enjoyment  of  his  prop- 
erty. From  such  an  unseemly  grub  sprung  the  winged 
Psyche  which  we  now  worship.  Female  purity  was  not 
handed  down  from  heaven  like  Promethean  fire ;  it  was 
born  behind  the  war-club  and  developed  with  the  criminal 
code.  It  is  sometimes  necessary  to  a  proper  understand- 
ing of  the  phenomena  with  which  we  are  confronted,  to 
examine  the  compost  from  which  springs  the  Rose  of 
Sharon.  Careful  examination  into  the  origin  and  develop- 
ment of  social  and  religious  phenomena  signs  the  death 
warrant  of  dogmatism  and  makes  us  tolerant  of  the  ideas 
of  others.  The  more  a  man  knows  the  more  he  doubts. 
Wisdom  stammers  while  Ignorance  out-bawls  Stentor. 
Fools  approve  or  condemn  according  to  the  creeds  and 
customs  to  which  they  are  born;  the  philosopher  rises 
superior  to  his  environment  and  education  and  views  hu- 
man institutions  and  habits  by  the  light  of  the  whole 
world's  history. 

Polygamy  has  gone,  but  America  has  forever  lost  her 
reputation  for  religious  tolerance.  Columbia  can  pose  no 
longer  as  the  champion  of  liberty  of  conscience.  The  man 
who  desires  to  worship  God  according  to  the  dictates  of 
his  own  conscience  had  best  charter  a  balloon.  The  Mor- 
mons are  drifting  to  Mexico,  and  while  these  home-build- 


360  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

ers  and  desert-subduers  are  going-  out  at  one  gate,  the  an- 
archists and  ignorami  of  Italy  and  Russia  are  rolling  in  at 
the  other.  Even  the  Mormons  who  remain,  and  have  re- 
nounced polygamy,  are  subjected  to  gross  indignities.  We 
send  our  missionaires  among  the  Mohammedans  and 
Buddhists  of  Asia  to  destroy  the  time-honored  faith  of 
their  fathers,  and  shield  them  from  insult  with  double- 
shotted  guns.  If  one  of  them  chance  to  catch  an  o'er  ripe 
egg  in  his  ample  ear,  we  shriek  about  "Moslem  fanati- 
cism" and  demand  that  the  government  tie  loose  the  dogs 
of  war ;  but  let  a  Mormon  elder  come  into  a  Christian 
community  and  begin  proselyting  for  his  faith  —  even 
since  shorn  of  polygamy — and  he  is  given  time  to  leave 
town.  Should  he  stand  upon  the  order  of  his  going,  in- 
stead of  humping  himself  down  the  plank  turnpike  with 
his  back  to  the  burg,  he  is  treated  to  a  coat  of  tar  and 
feathers,  supplemented  by  a  ride  on  a  triangular  rail.  The 
fact  is  that  despite  our  boasted  civilization  and  prattle 
anent  freedom  of  thought,  we  are  about  the  most  narrow- 
brained  bigots  and  intolerant  fanatics  to  be  found  on 
God's  foot-stool.  Our  very  atheists  are  dogmatists  in 
their  denial;  our  agnostics  are  pharisees  in  their  pride  of 
ignorance,  while  the  American  definition  of  a  liberalist  is 
a  man  who  thinks  as  he  durn  pleases  and  protests  against 
others  exercising  the  same  prerogative. 


POTIPHAR'S  WIFE. 
STORY  OF  JOSEPH  REVISED. 

For  more  than  six-and-thirty  centuries  the  brand  of  the 
courtesan  has  rested  on  the  brow  of  Potiphar's  wife.  The 
religious  world  persists  in  regarding  her  as  an  abandoned 
woman  who  wickedly  strove  to  lead  an  immaculate  he-vir- 
gin astray.  The  crime  of  which  she  stands  accused  is  so 
unspeakably  awful  that  even  after  the  lapse  of  ages  we 
cannot  refer  to  the  miserable  creature  without  a  moan. 
Compared  with  her  infamous  conduct  old  Lot's  dalliance 
with  his  young  daughters  and  David's  ravishment  of  Uriah's 
wife  appear  but  venial  faults,  or  even  shine  as  spotless  vir- 
tues. 

The  story  of  Mrs.  Potiphar's  unrequited  passion  may  be 
strictly  true;  but  if  so  the  world  has  changed  most  won- 
drously.  It  transcends  the  probable  and  rests  upon  such 
doubtful  ex  parte  evidence  that  a  modern  court  would  give 


BRANN.  THE  ICONOCLAST  361 

her  a  certificate  of  good  character.  It  is  not  in  ac- 
cord with  our  criminal  code  to  damn  a  woman  on  the  un- 
supported deposition  of  a  young  dude  whom  she  has  had 
arrested  for  attempted  ravishment.  Had  Joseph  simply 
filed  a  general  denial  and  proven  previous  good  character 
we  might  suspect  the  madame  of  malicious  prosecution;  but 
he  doth  protest  too  much. 

Mrs.  Potiphar  was  doubtless  a  young  and  pretty  woman. 
She  was  the  wife  of  a  wealthy  and  prominent  official  of 
Pharaoh's  court,  and  those  old  fellows  were  a  trifle  exacting 
in  their  tastes.  They  sought  out  the  handsomest  women  of 
the  world  to  grace  their  homes,  for  sensuous  love  was  then 
the  supreme  law  of  wedded  life.  Joseph  was  a  young 
Hebrew  slave  belonging  to  Mrs.  Potiphar's  husband,  who 
treated  him  with  exceptional  consideration  because  of  his 
business  ability.  One  day  the  lad  found  himself  alone  with 
the  lady.  The  latter  suddenly  turned  in  a  fire  alarm,  and 
Jacob's  favorite  son  jogged  along  Josie  in  such  hot  haste 
that  he  left  his  garment  behind.  Mrs.  Potiphar  informed 
those  who  responded  to  her  signal  of  distress  that  the 
slave  had  attempted  a  criminal  assault.  She  is  supposed  to 
have  repeated  the  story  to  her  husband  when  he  came 
home,  and  the  chronicler  adds,  in  a  tone  of  pained  surprise, 
that  the  old  captain's  "anger  was  kindled."  Neither  Mrs. 
Potiphar's  husband  nor  her  dearest  female  friends  appear 
to  have  doubted  her  version  of  the  affair,  which  argues  that, 
for  a  woman  who  moved  in  the  highest  social  circles,  she 
enjoyed  a  reasonably  good  reputation. 

But  Joseph  had  a  different  tale  to  tell.  He  said  that 
the  poor  lady  became  desperately  enamored  of  his  beauty 
and  day  by  day  assailed  his  continence,  but  that  he  was 
deaf  to  her  amorous  entreaties  as  Adonis  to  the  dear  blan- 
dishments of  Venus  Pandermos.  Finally  she  became  so 
importunate  that  he  was  compelled  to  seek  safety  in  flight. 
He  saved  his  virtue  but  lost  his  vestments.  It  was  a  narrow 
escape,  and  the  poor  fellow  must  have  been  dreadfully 
frightened.  Suppose  that  the  she-Tarquin  had  accom- 
plished her  hellish  design,  and  that  her  victim  had  died  of 
shame?  She  would  have  changed  the  whole  current  of  the 
world's  history!  Old  Jacob  and  his  other  interesting  if  less 
virtuous  sons,  would  have  starved  to  death,  and  there  would 
have  been  neither  Miracles  nor  Mosaic  Law,  Ten  Com- 
mandments nor  Vicarious  Atonement.  Talmage  and  other 
industrious  exploiters  of  intellectual  tommyrot,  now  lad- 
ling out  saving  grace  for  fat  salaries,  might  be  as  unctu- 
ously mouthing  for  Miimibo  Jumbo,  fanning  the  flies  off 
some  sacred  bull  or  bowing  the  knee  to  Baal.  The  Pot- 


362  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

iphar-Joseph  episode  deserves  the  profoundest  study.     It 
was  an  awful  crisis  in  the  history  of  the  human  race ! 

How  thankful  we,  who  live  in  these  latter  days,  should  be 
that  the  female  rape  fiend  has  passed  into  the  unreturn- 
ing  erstwhile  with  the  horned  unicorn  and  dreadful  hip- 
pogriff,  the  minotaur  and  other  monsters  that  once  af- 
frighted the  fearful  souls  of  men — that  sensuous  sirens  do 
not  so  assail  us  and  rip  our  coat-tails  off  in  a  foul  attempt 
to  wreck  our  virtue  and  fill  our  lives  with  fierce  regret. 
True,  the  Rev.  Parkhurst  doth  protest  that  he  was  hard 
beset  by  beer  and  beauty  unadorned;  but  he  seems  to>  have 
been  seeking  the  loaded  "schooner"  and  listening  for  the 
siren's  dizzy  song.  Had  Joseph  lived  in  Texas  he  could 
never  have  persuaded  Judge  Lynch  that  the  lady  and  not 
he  should  be  hanged.  The  youngster  dreamed  himself  into 
slavery,  and  I  opine  that  he  dreamed  himself  into  jail.  With 
the  internal  evidence  of  the  story  for  guide,  I  herewith  pre- 
sent, on  behalf  of  Mrs.  Potiphar,  a  revised  and  reasonable 
version  of  the  affaire  d 'amour. 

Joseph  was,  the  chronicler  informs  us,  young,  "a  goodly 
person  and  well  favoured."  His  Hebraic  type  of  manly 
beauty  and  mercurial  temperament  must  have  contrasted 
strangely  with  Mrs.  Potiphar's  dark  and  stolid  country- 
men. Mistress  and  slave  were  much  together,  the  master's 
duties  requiring  his  presence  near  his  prince.  Time  hung 
heavily  on  the  lady's  hands  and,  as  an  ennui  antidote,  she 
embarked  in  a  desperate  flirtation  with  the  handsome  fel- 
low, for  Egypt's  dark-eyed  daughters  dearly  love  to  play 
fast  and  loose  with  the  hearts  of  men.  Of  course  it  was 
very  wrong;  but  youth  and  beauty  will  not  be  strictly 
bound,  the  opportunity  seemed  made  for  mischief,  and  Mrs. 
Potiphar  cared  little  for  her  lord — a  grisly  old  warrior  who 
treated  her  as  a  pretty  toy  his  wealth  had'  purchased,  to 
be  petted  or  put  aside  at  pleasure. 

A  neglected  wife  whose  charms  attract  the  admiring  eyes 
of  men  may  not  depart  one  step  from  the  straight  and 
narrow  path,  but  her  husband's  honor  stands  ever  within 
the  pale  of  danger.  Let  that  husband  whose  courtship 
ceased  at  Hymen's  shrine,  who  is  a  gallant  abroad  and  a 
boor  at  home,  keep  watch  and  ward,  for  homage  is 'sweet 
even  to  wedded  women. 

While  Potiphar  played  the  petty  tyrant  and  exacted  of 
his  wife  a  blind  obedience,  Joseph  sang  to  her  songs 
she  loved — plaintive  tales  of  tender  passion,  of  enchanted 
monarchs  and  maids  of  matchless  beauty.  He  culled  the 
fairest  flowers  from  the  great  garden  and  wove  them  into 
garlands  to  deck  her  hair,  dark  as  that  lingering  night  which 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  363 

Moses  laid  upon  the  Valley  of  the  Nile.  He  gave  her  a 
thousand  little  attentions  so  grateful  to  womankind,  and 
worshipped  her,  not  presumptuously,  but  with  the  sacred 
awe  of  a  simtple  desert  child  turning  his  face  to  greet  trie 
rising  sun.  They  were  of  the  same  age, — that  age  when  the 
heart  beats  in  passionate  rebellion  against  cold  precepts, 
the  blood  riots  in  the  veins  like  molten  rubies  and  all 
life  seems  made  for  love,  for  day  dreams  golden  as  the 
dawn,  for  sighs  and  sweet  companionship.  What  wonder 
that  she  sometimes  left  her  lord  to  his  heavy  slumbers  and 
crept  into  the  cool  gardens  with  the  handsome  Hebrew  boy ; 
that  they  walked,  hand  clasped  in  hand,  beneath  the  tall 
palms  that  nodded  knowingly,  and  whispered  sweet  noth- 
ings while  the  mellow  moonlight  quivered  on  the  Nile  and 
sad  Philomela  poured  forth  her  plaintive  song  like  a  flood 
of  lover's  tears?  All  day  long  they  were  alone  together, 
— those  children  of  the  world's  youth,  when  life  was  strong 
and  moral  law  was  weak.  When  the  summer  sun  rode 
high  in  heaven  and  sent  his  burnished  shafts  straight  down 
into  the  white  streets  and  swooning  gardens;  when  the 
great  house  was  closed  to  shut  out  the  blinding  glare  and  in 
the  court  cool  fountains  cast  their  grateful  spray,  what 
wonder  that  she  bade  him  sit  at  her  feet  and  sing  the  love 
songs  of  his  native  land,  wild  prototypes  of  those  which 
Solomon  poured  from  the  depths  of  his  sensuous  soul  to  his 
sweet  Rose  of  Sharon? 

"Behold  thou  art  fair,  my  love,  behold  thou  art  fair; 
Thou  hast  dove's  eyes,  thy  lips  are  like  a  thread  of  scarlet, 
Thy  breasts  like  young  roes  that  feed  among  the  lilies. 
Set  me  as  a  seal  upon  thy  heart,  a  seal  upon  thy  arm, 
For  love  is  strong  as  death,  jealousy  is  cruel  as  the  grave.'* 

The  song  dies  out  and  the  languorous  stillness  is'  broken 
only  by  the  splashing  of  the  fountains  in  the  great  marble 
basins  and  the  drowsy  hum  of  a  bee  among  the  'blossoms. 
The  lad's  head  has  sunk  down  upon  the  lady's  knee  and 
she  is  watching  the  tears  trembling  on  his  drooping  lashes 
and  wondering,  with  a  little  thrill  of  pain,  if  he  has  a 
sweetheart  in  his  own  land,  of  whom  he  is'  so  sadly  dream- 
ing. She  thanks  him  for  the  song  in  a  voice  low  and  sweet 
as  the  musical  ripple  of  the  sacred  river  among  the  reeds — 
she  dazzles  him  with  her  great  Egyptian  eyes,  those  ebon 
orbs  in  which  ever  lurks  the  sensuous  splendor  of  a  sum- 
mer night's  high  moon.  Her  hand  strays  carelessly  among 
his  curls  as  she  punctuates  with  sighs  and  tears  his  oft-told 
tale  of  unkind  brethren,  the  gloomy  cave,  the  coat  of  many 
colors  dipped  in  blood  of  the  slaughtered  kid,  the  cruel 
goad  of  godless  Midianite,  driving  him  on  and  on  thro* 


364  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

burning  sands  and  'neath  a  blazing  sun,  far  from  his  tearful 
mother  and  mourning  sire.  How  cruel  the  fates  to  con 
sign  to  slavery  one  born  to  be  a  king!  His  master  is  a 
hard  man  and  covetous,  but  her  pleadings  shall  yet  purchase 
sweet  liberty  for  old  Jacob's  son,  that  he  may  fulfill  the 
high  dreams  of  which  he  has  told  her — may  answer  the. 
midnight  messages  of  Israel's  God  and  triumph  over  those 
wicked  brethren.  Perhaps — who  knows  ? — in  his  own 
land  he  will  become  a  mighty  prince  and  treat  with  proud 
Pharaoh  on  equal  terms.  Will  he  remember  Her,  his  only 
friend  in  a  land  of  foes?  Will  he  think  of  her  wrhen  Am- 
mon  is  o'erthrown  and  proud  Moab  pays  his  tribute?  Ala, 
no!  When  a  crown  of  jewels  blazes  on  his  brow  and  the 
sack-cloth  of  the  slave  is  exchanged  for  imperial  purple, 
he'll  think  no  more  of  the  lonely  little  woman  by  Nilus 
bank,  who  prays  that  Isis  will  magnify  his  power,  that  Osiris 
will  shield  him  when  the  Hebrew  sword  rings  on  the  Hivite 
spear.  He  will  take  to  wife  some  fair  cousin  of  Esau's 
house,  a  maid  more  beauteous  far  than  those  who  drink  the 
sweet  waters  of  the  south.  Old  Abram's  daughters  are  fair 
and  have  dove's  eyes;  their  lips  are  as  threads  of  scarlet  and 
their  breasts  like  young  roes  that  feed  among  the  lilies. 
Does  not  the  song  say  so?  But  those  of  Egypt — oh,  un- 
happy Egypt! 

"Love  is  strong  as  death,  jealousy  is  cruel  as  the  grave." 

She  bends  low  and  whispers  the  line  upon  his  lips,  while 
her  fragrant  breath,  beating  upon  his  cheek,  sinks  into  his 
blood  like  the  jasmines'  perfume, — more  dangerous  to  the 
soul  than  Aphrodite's  kisses  or  Anacreort's  drunken  song. 
By  such  arts  did  Cleopatra  win  the  master  spirit  of  the  world 
and  make  the  mailed  warrior  her  doting  slave,  indifferent 
alike  to  honor  and  to  duty,  content  but  to  live  and  love. 
What  wonder  that  the  callow  shepherd  lad,  unskilled  in 
woman's  wile,  believed  that  his  mistress  loved  him? — that 
his  heart  went  out  to  the  handsome  coquette  in  a  wild, 
passionate  throb  in  which  all  Heaven's  angels  sang  and 
Hell's  demons  shrieked! 

A  beautiful  woman!  Not  the  beauty  of  Greece,  on 
which  we  gaze  as  upon  some  wondrous  flower  wafted  from 
Elysian  Fields,  and  too  ethereal  for  this  gross  world;  nor 
that  of  Rome,  with  Pallas'  snow-cold  bosom  and  retro- 
spective eye ;  but  the  sensuous  beauty  of  the  far  south,  that 
casts  a  Circean  spell  upon  the 'souls  of  men.  Her  eyes 
are  not  dove's  eyes  that  softly  shine  along  the  path  to 
Heaven,  but  wandering  fires  that  light  the  way  to  Hell. 
Her  lips  are  not  a  thread  of  scarlet,  chaste  as  childhood 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  365 

and  dewy  as  the  dawn,  but  the  deep  sullen  red  of  a  city 
swept  with  flames.  Her  breasts  are  not  like  young  roes 
that  feed  among  the  lilies,  but  ivory  hemispheres  threaded 
with  purple  fire  and  tinged  with  sunset's  tawny  gold.  Rev- 
erently as  though  touching  divinity's  robe,  Joseph  caresses 
the  wanton  curls  that  stream  like  an  inky  storn>cloud  over 
the  shapely  shoulders — he  puts  the  little  hands,  heavy  with 
costly  gems,  back  from  the  tearful  face  and  holds  them  with 
a  grasp  so  fierce  that  the  massy  rings  of  beaten  gold  bruise 
the  tender  flesh.  Mrs.  Potiphar  starts  up,  alarmed  by  his 
unwonted  boldness — she  reads  his  face  with  a  swift  glance 
that  tells  her  he  is  no  longer  a  lad,  a  pretty  boy  to  be 
trifled  with  for  the  amusement  of  an  idle  hour.  The  Cupid's 
bow  had  faded  forever  from  his  lip  and  childhood's  inno- 
cence from  his  eye;  he  has  crossed  life's  Rubicon,  has  pass- 
ed at  one  stride  from  the  Vale  of  Youth  with  its  trifles  and 
its  idle  tears,  its  ignorance  of  sex  and  stainless  love,  to 
Manhood's  rugged  mountains,  where  blazes  Ambition's 
baleful  star  and  the  fires  of  passion  ever  beat,  fiercer  than 
those  that  sweep  Gehenna's  sulphurous  hills. 

Even  while'  her  cheek  crimsons  with  anger  .and'  her 
heart  flutters  with  fear,  the  woman  glories  in  Joseph's 
guilty  love,  sweet  incense  to  her  vanity,  evidence  of  her 
peerless  beauty's  infernal  power.  She  retreats  a  step  as 
from  the  brink  of  an  abyss,  but  farther  she  cannot  fly,  for 
there  is  a  charm  in  her  companion's  voice,  potent  as  old 
in  dreams  by  maids  who  sleep  in  Dian's  bosom,  yet  wilder, 
fiercer  than  trumpets  blown  for  war.  As  a  sailor  drawn  to 
his  doom  by  siren  song,  or  a  bird  spellbound  by  some  nox- 
ious serpent,  she  advances  fearfully  and  slow  until  she  is 
swept  into  his  strong  arms  and  held  quivering  there  like  a 
splotch  of  foam  in  a  swift  eddy  of  the  upper  Nile.  The  room 
swims  before  her  eyes  and  fills  with  mocking  demons  that 
welcome  her  to  the  realm  of  darkness;  the  fountains'  rip- 
ple sounds  like  roaring  thunder,  in  which  she  reads  the 
angry  warning  of  Egypt's  gods,  while  beneath  the  ac- 
cursed magic  of  the  kisses  that  burn  upon  her  lips,  her 
blood  becomes  boiling  wine  and  rushes  hissing  thro'  a 
heart  of  vice.  The  mocking  demons  turn  to  angels  with 
Joseph's  handsome  face  and  crown  her  with  fragrant  flow- 
ers: the  thret'ning  thunders  to  music  sweet  as  Memnon's 
matin  hymn  or  accepted  lover's  sighs,  heard  'neath  the 
harvest  moon, — she  is  afloat  upon  a  sapphire  sea  beneath  a 
sunset  sky,  the  West  Wind's  musky  wing  wafting  her, 
whither  she  neither  knows  nor  cares. 

But  the  angels  and  the  fragrant  flowers,  the  music  sweet 
as  lover's  sighs  and  the  sapphire  sea,  the  sunset  sky  and 


366  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

Zephyrus'  musky  wing  are  dreams;  the  blistered  lips  and 
poor  bruised  bosom,  the  womanly  pride  humbled  in  the 
dust  and  wifely  honor  wounded  unto  death — these  alone 
are  real!  With  an  involuntary  cry  of  rage  and  shame,  a  cry 
that  is  half  a  prayer  and  half  a  curse — a  cry  that  rings 
and  reverberates  through  the  great  sleepy  house  like  a 
maniac's  shriek  heard  at  midnight  among  the  tombs — 
she  flings  herself  sobbing  and  moaning  upon  the  marble 
floor.  The  drowsy  slave  starts  up  as  from  a  dream,  quiv- 
ering in  every  limb  like  a  coward  looking  upon  his  death. 
He  tries  to  raise  the  groveling  victim  of  his  unbridled 
lust,  but  she  beats  him  back;  he  pleads  for  mercy,  but  she 
calls  him  ungrateful  slave,  base  Hebrew  dog  and  prays  all 
Egypt's  gods  to  curse  her  conqueror.  There's  a  rush  of 
feet  along  the  hall,  there's  a  clash  of  weapons  in  the  court, 
and  here  and  there  and  everywhere  tearful  maids  are  call- 
ing to  their  mistress,  the  Sweet  One  and  Beautiful,  dear 
Daughter  of  the  Dawn,  Lily  of  the  Nile,  while  brawny 
eunuchs,  barelimbed  and  black  as  Hell's  own  brood,  are 
vowing  dire  vengeance  even  upon  the  King  himself  if  he 
has  dared  to  harm  her.  The  culprit  glances  with  haggard 
face  and  wildly  pleading  eyes  at  the  woman,  once  so  im- 
perial in  her  pride,  now  cowering  a  thing  accursed,  clothed 
only  with  her  shame  and  flood  of  ebon  hair.  The  great 
sun,  that  hung  in  mid-heaven  like  a  disc  of  burnished  brass 
when  she  first  forgot  her  duty,  descends  like  a  monstrous 
wheel  of  blood  upon  the  western  desert  and  thro'  the  case- 
ment pours  a  ruddy  glow  over  the  prostrate  figure — a  mar- 
ble Venus  blushing  rosy  red.  Joseph  casts  his  coarse  gar- 
ment over  his  companion  as  one  might  clothe  the  beauteous 
dead,  and  turns  away,  the  picture  of  Despair,  the  avatar  of 

guilty  Fear. 

*         *         * 

Love  is  a  dangerous  game  to  play,  and  oft  begun 
in  wanton  mischief  ends  in  woeful  madness.  In  the  first 
flush  of  shame  and  rage  Mrs.  Potiphar  was  eager  to  punish 
the  slave's  presumption,  even  tho'  herself  overwhelmed  in 
his  ruin ;  but  hate,  tho'  fierce,  is  a  fickle  flame  in  the  female 
heart,  and  seldom  survives  a  single  flood  of  tears.  Al- 
ready Joseph's  handsome  face  is  haunting  her — already 
she  is  dreaming  o'er  the  happy  hours  by  Nilus'  bank,  where 
first  he  praised  her  wondrous  beauty — beneath  the  nod- 
ding palms  when  the  fireflies  blazed  and  the  bulbul  poured 
its  song.  The  love  that  has  lain  latent  within  her  bosom, 
or  burned  with  friendship's  unconsuming  flame,  awakes  like 
smouldering  embers  fanned  by  desert  winds  and  fed  with 
camphor  wood,  enveloping  all  her  world.  She  longs  to 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  367 

leave  the  loveless  life  with  her  sullen  lord;  to  cast  from  her 
as  things  accursed  the  gaudy  robes  and  glittering  gems; 
to  fly  with  the  shepherd  lad  to  the  deep  cool  forests  of  the 
far  east  and  dream  her  life  away  in  some  black  tent  or 
vine-embowered  cot — to  take  his  hand  in  hers  and  wander 
on  to  the  world's  extreme  verge,  listening  to  the  music  of 
his  voice.  The  great  house,  once  her  pride,  has  become  a 
gruesome  prison,  the  jailor  a  grizzly  gorgon  who  conjured 
her  with  the  baleful  gleam  of  gold  to  cast  her  beauty  on 
Mammon's  brutish  shrine.  She  hardens  her  heart 
against  him  and  pities  herself,  as  wives  are  wont  to  do  who 
have  dragged  the  dear  honor  of  their  husbands  in  the  dust — 
she  persuades  herself  that  love  has  cast  radiant  glory  about 
her  guilt  and  sanctified  her  shame.  Oh  woman,  what  a 
paradox  thou  art!  When  the  descending  sun  touched  the 
horizon's  rim  Mrs.  Potiphar  could  have  plunged  a  poisoned 
dagger  through  the  heart  of  her  paramour  and  mocked  his 
dying  moan;  the  great  globe  of  fire  has  not  bid  the  world 
good  night,  yet  she  is  weeping  because  of  the  bitter  words 
witli  which  she  drove  him'  forth. 

"Love  is  strong  as  death." 

She  repeats  the  line  again  and  again.  Oh  my  Israel,  is 
the  grave  the  limit  of1  thy  love?  Wert  thou  dead,  fair  boy, 
Egypt  would  enclose  thy  sacred  ashes  in  a  golden  urn  and 
wear  it  ever  between  her  breasts — would  make  for  thee 
a  living  sepulchre  and  thou  shouldst  sleep  in  the  vale  of 
Love,  between  the  rosy  mountains  of  Desire.  Wert  thou 
dead — 

The  slaves!  They  will  tell  their  master  the  wild  words 
she  spoke  against  her  love — against  his  life.  She  must 
seal  their  lips,  must  command  their  silence.  Too  late! 
[Even  as  she  lays  her  hand  on  the  silver  bell  the  heavy 
tread  of  her  husband's  brass-shod  feet  is  heard  in  the 
long  hall,  ringing  upon  the  bare  stone  floor  in  rapid,  ner- 
vous rhythm,  so  different  from  the  usual  majestic  tread  of 
Pharaoh's  chief  slaughterman.  The  slaves  have  already 
spoken!  A  faintness  as  of  death  falls  upon  her;  but  she 
is  a  true  daughter  of  false  Egypt,  and  a  wiser  than  Potiphar 
would  find  in  her  face  no  shadow!  of  the  fear  that  lies  heavy 
on  her  heart.  The  game  is  called  and  she  must  play  not  for 
name  and  fame,  but  for  love  and  life.  Her  husband  con- 
fronts her,  ferocity  incarnate, — the  great  cord-like  veins 
of  the  broad,  low  brow  and  massive  neck  knotted  and 
black,  his  eyes  blazing  like  the  orbs  of  an  angry  lion 
seen  by  the  flickering  light  of  a  shepherd's  fire.  He  essays 
to  speak,  but  his  tongue  is  thick,  his  lips  parched  as  one 
stricken  with  the  plague,  and  instead  of  words  there  comes 


368  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

through  his  set  teeth  a  horse,  hissing  sound  as  of  the 
great  rock  serpent  in  its  wrath.  His  glance  falls  upon 
Joseph's  garment,  the  gleaming  sword  leaps  from  its  sheath 
and  he  turns  to  seek  the  slave.  She  lays  her  hand  lightly 
upon  his  arm,  great  Egypt's  shield,  a  pillar  of  living  brass; 
she  nestles  in  the  grizzly  beard  like  some  bright  flower  in  a 
weird  forest;  she  kisses  the  bronzed  cheek  as  Judas  did 
that  of  our  dear  Lord  and  soothes  him  with  pretty  truths 
that  are  wholly  lies. 

Joseph  is  a  good  boy,  but  sometimes  over-bold.  Poor 
child!  Perhaps  her  beauty  charmed  away  his  senses  and 
made  him  forget  his  duty.  She  bade  him  sing  to  beguile 
a  tedious  hour,  and  he  sang  of  love  and  looked  at  her  with 
such  a  world  of  worship  in  his  eyes  that  she  grew  angry 
and  upbraided  him.  Let  it  pass;  for,  by  the  mystic  mark 
of  Apis,  she  frightened  the  boy  out  of  his  foolish  fever. 

She  laughs  gleefully,  and  the  gruff  old  soldier  suffers 
her  to  take  his  sword,  growling  meanwhile  that  he  likes 
not  these  alarms — that  she  has  marshalled  Egypt's  powers 
to  battle  with  a  mirage.  The  game  is  won;  but  guilt  will 
never  rest  content,  and  oft  reveals  itself  by  much  con- 
cealment. It  is  passing  strange,  she  tells  him  tearfully, 
that  every  male  who  looks  upon  her,  whether  gray-headed 
grand-sire  or  beardless  boy,  seems  smitten  with  love's  mad- 
ness. She  knows  not  why  'tis  so.  If  there  is  in  her  con- 
duct aught  to  challenge  controversy  she  prays  that  he  will 
tell  her.  The  old  captain's  brow  again  grows  black.  He 
leads  her  where  the  fading  light  falls  upon  her  face,  and, 
looking  down  into  her  eyes  as  tho'  searching  out  the 
secrets  of  her  soul,  bids  her  mark  well  his  words.  The 
wife  who  bears  herself  becomingly  never  hears  the  tempt- 
er's tone  or  knows  aught  of  any  love  but  that  of  her  right- 
ful lord.  Pure  womanhood  is  a  wondrous  shield,  more 
potent  far  than  swords.  If  she  has  been  approached  by 
lawless  libertine,  he  bids  her,  for  the  honor  of  his  house, 
to  set  a  seal  upon  her  lips,  instead  of  bruiting  her  shame 
abroad  as  women  are  wont  to  do  whose  vanity  outruns 

their  judgment. 

*         *         * 

Potiphar  determines  to  watch  his  wife.  It  had  never 
occurred  to  him  that  she  could  possibly  go  astray;  but  he 
has  learned  from  her  own  Confession  that  she  is  a  flirt, 
and  he  knows  full  well  that  a  married  coquette  is  half  a 
courtesan.  Suspecting  that  Joseph's  offense  is  graver  than 
his  wife  set  forth,  he  casts  him  into  prison.  The  inex- 
perienced youth,  believing  the  full  extent  of  his  guilt  has 
been  blazoned  to  the  world,  and  frightened  beyond  his 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  369 

wits  by  armed  men  and  clank  of  chains,  protests  with 
tears  and  sighs  that  he  is  more  sinned  against  than  sin- 
ning. Tt  is  the  old  story  of  Adam  improved  upon — he 
not  only  damns  the  woman,  but  denies  the  apple. 

Joseph's  posterity,  hating  Egypt  with  their  whole  heart 
and  intent  on  glorifying  Israel  and  Israel's  God,  became 
the  only  historians  of  this  original  scandal  in  high  life;  and 
thus  was  a  youth,  probably  neither  better  nor  worse  than 
his  brethren,  raised  to  the  dignity  of  a  demi-god,  while  a 
vain  young  wife  is  condemned  through  all  the  ages  to  wear 
a  wanton's  name.  The  story  probably  contains  a  moral — 
which  wives  mav  look  for  if  thev  will. 


Of  course  this  account  of  Mrs.  Potiphar's  seduction  is 
a  fancy  sketch ;  but  it  is  a  true  pen-picture  of  what  too  often 
happens  in  this  fair  land  of  ours,  and  may  be  perused  with 
profit  by  many  a  Benedict.  The  number  of  unfaithful 
wives  whose  sin  becomes  the  public  shame  is  simply  ap- 
palling; yet  no  criminal  was  ever  so  cautious,  so  adept 
in  the  art  of  concealment  as  the  woman  who  values  her  rep- 
utation above  her  honor.  There  is  no  secret  a  man  will 
guard  with  such  vigilance  as  his  amours,  no  copartner  in 
iniquity  he  will  shield  with  such  fidelity  as  a  paramour. 
The  bandit  may  turn  state's  evidence,  and  the  assassin 
confess  beneath  the  noose;  but  the  roue  will  die  protesting 
that  his  mistress  is  pure  as  the  driven  snow. 

And  yet  woman  is  by  nature  as  true  to  her  rightful 
lord  as  the  needle  to  the  magnetic  north, — as  faithful  to  her 
marriage  vows  as  the  stars  to  their  appointed  courses. 
When  a  wife  "goes  astray"  the  chances  are  as  one  to  infin- 
ity that  the  mis-step  is  her  husband's  fault.  Love  is  the  very 
life  of  woman.  She  can  no  more  exist  without  it  than 
the  vine  can  climb  Heavenward  without  support, — than  it 
can  blossom  and  bear  fruit  without  the  warm  kiss  of  the 
summer  sun.  Woman's  love  is  a  flame  that  must  find  an 
altar  upon  which  to  blaze,  a  god  to  glorify ;  but  that  sacred 
fire  will  not  forever  burn  'mid  fields  of  snow  nor  send  up 
intense  sweet  to  an  unresponsive  idol,  even  tho'  it  bear 
the  name  of  husband.  The  man  who  courts  the  wife  as 
assiduously  as  he  did  his  sweetheart,  makes  the  same  sac- 
rifice to  serve  her,  shows  the  same  appreciation  of  her 
efforts  to  please  him,  need  never  fear  a  rival.  He  is  lord 
paramount  of  her  heart,  and,  forsaking  all  others,  she  will 
cleave  unto  him  thro'  good  and  thro'  evil,  thro'  weal  and 
thro'  woe,  thro'  life  unto  death.  But  the  man  who  imag- 
ines his  duty  done  when  he  provides  food,  shelter  and  fine 


370  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

raiment  for  the  woman  he  has  won;  who  treats  her  as  if 
she  were  a  slave  who  should  feel  honored  in  serving  him ; 
who  vents  upon  her  hapless  head  the  ill-nature  he  would 
like  to  pour  into  the  faces  of  his  fellow-men,  but  dares 
not,  were  wise  to  heed  the  advice  which  lago  gave  to  the 
Moor. 

Woman  is  more  subtle  than  her  ancient  enemy,  the 
serpent,  and  woe  to  the  man  who  attempts  to  tread  her 
beneath  his  feet!  True  it  is  that  all  women  who  find  the 
hymenial  rites  but  an  unreading  of  that  enchanted  spell 
in  which  they  worshipped  devils  as  demi-gods;  between 
whose  eager  lips  the  golden  apples  of  Hesperides  prove 
but  Dead  Sea  fruit ;  for  whom  the  promised  Elysium 
looms  but  a  parched  Sahara,  do  not  seek  in  forbidden  fields 
to  feed  their  famished  hearts;  but  it  is  well  for  the  peace 
of  mind  of  many  a  husband  who  neither  dotes  nor  doubts, 
that  black  dishonor  oft  goes  hand  in  hand  with  blissful 
ignorance. 

The  philosophic  world  rejects  the  story  of  Joseph,  having 
long  ago  learned  that  he-Dians  live  only  in  childish  legend 
and  Della-Cruscan  poetry.  As  an  ideal  it  reverses  the 
natural  relation  of  the  sexes;  as  an  example  it  is  worse 
than  worthless,  for  instead  of  inspiring  emulation  the  young 
Hebrew's  heroic  continence  only  provokes  contempt. 
Men  worship  at  the  shrine  of  Solomon's  wisdom,  of  Moses' 
perseverance,  of  David's  dauntless  courage,  but  crown  the 
altar  of  Joseph  with  asses'  ears.  Such  foolish  Munchhaus- 
enisms  give  to  young  girls  a  false  idea  of  the  opposite  sex, 
relax  their  vigilance  and  imperil  their  virtue.  From  such 
ridiculous  romances,  solemnly  approved  by  an  owl-like 
priesthood,  sprung  that  false  code — so  insulting  to  woman- 
kind— that  a  wife's  honor  is  not  committed  to  her  own 
keeping,  but  to  the  tender  care  of  every  man  with  whom 
she  comes  in  contact.  When  a  wife  goes  wrong  a  hypo- 
critical world  rises  in  well-simulated  "wrath — which  is  too 
often  envy — and  hurls  its  anathema  maranatha  at  the  head 
of  the  ''designing  villain,"  as  tho'  his  companion  in  crime 
were  born  without  brains  and  reared  without  instruction! 
The  "injured  husband" — who  probably  drove  his  wife  to  the 
devil  by  studied  neglect  that  starved  her  heart  and  wounded 
her  vanity — is  regarded  with  contempt  if  he  does  not  "make 
a  killing"  for  a  crime  against  the  social  code  which  he  would 
himself  commit. 

I  paint  man  as  I  find  him,  not  as  I  would  have  him. 
I  did  not  create  him,  or  did  his  Architect  ask  my  advice; 
hence  it  is  no  fault  of  mine  that  his  virtue's  frail  as  ocean 
foam — not  mine  the  blame  that  while  half  a  god  he's  all  a 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  371 

beast.  Mentally  and  sexually  man  is  a  polygamist,  and, 
whatever  its  moral  value  may  be,  monogamy  does  violence 
to  the  law  of  his  being.  It  is  a  barrier  against  which  he 
ever  beats  like  some  wild  beast  of  prey  against  restraining 
bars.  Give  him  Psyche  to  wife  and  Sappho  for  mistress 
and  he  were  not  content — would  swim  a  river  to  make  mad 
love  to  some  freckled  maid.  It  is  likely  that  Leander  had 
at  home  a  wife  he  dearly  loved  when  he  lost  his  life  trying 
to  reach  fair  Hero's  bower.  That  the  Lord  expects  little 
even  of  the  best  of  men  when  subjected  to  beauty's  bland- 
ishments is  proven  by  his  partiality  to  various  princes  and 
patriarchs  who,  in  matters  of  gallantry,  may  be  regarded  as 
pace-setters. 

I  am  not  the  apologist  of  the  godless  rake,  the  defender 
of  the  roue;  but  I  have  small  patience  with  those  mawkish 
purists  who  persist  in  measuring  men  and  women  by  the 
same  standard  of  morals.  We  might  as  well  apply  the 
same  code  to  the  fierce  Malay  who  runs  amuck  and  to 
McAllister's  fashionable  pismires.  We  might  as  wisely 
bring  to  the  same  judgment  bar  Bengal's  royal  beast,  crazed 
with  lust  for  blood,  and  Jaques  wounded  deer,  weeping  in 
the  purling  brook.  Each  sex  and  genus  must  be  considered 
by  itself,  for  each  possesses  its  peculiar  virtues  and  inherent 
vices.  In  all  nature  God  intended  the  male  to  seek,  the 
female  to  be  sought.  These  he  drives  with  passion's  fiery 
scourge,  those  he  gently  leads  by  maternal  longings,  and 
thus  is  the  Law  of  Life  fulfilled, — the  living  tide  runs  ever 
on  from  age  to  age,  while  divine  Modesty  preserves  her 
name  and  habitation  in  the  earth.  A  man's  crown  of  glory 
is  his  courage,  a  woman's  her  chastity.  While  these  remain 
the  incense  rises  ever  from  Earth's  altar  to  Heaven's  eternal 
throne;  but  it  matters  not  how  pure  the  man  if  he  be  a 
cringing  coward,  how  brave  the  woman  if  she  be  a  brazen 
bawd.  Lucrece  as  Caesar  were  infamous,  and  Caesar  as 
Lucrece  were  a  howling  farce. 


BRO.  EARLY'S  BAZOO. 
THE  FOREIGN  MISSION  FAKE. 

I  am  always  discovering  something  new  and  strange. 
While  Prof.  Roentgen  is  experimenting  \vith  the  X  ray  and 
Dr.  Depew  is  unearthing  ante-diluvian  almanac  jokes,  I 
am  bringing  to  the  garish  light  of  day  wonderful  differen- 
tiations of  the  intellectual  doodlebug.  I  am  not  wont  to 
boast  over-much  of  my  services  to  science;  still  it  is  but 


372  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

fair  that  I  be  accorded  due  credit  for  having  discovered 
Dr.  Jehovah  Boanerges  Cranfill,  where  he  lay  buried  in  the 
sub-stratum  of  the  azoic  period  by  the  anti-prohibition 
majority,  and  the  Hon.  Whoopee  Kalamity  Homan,  of 
Dallas,  after  he  had  been  trodden  into  the  quicksands 
by  the  political  bull  elephant.  And  now  patient  research 
in  the  field  of  micrology  has  been  rewarded  by  the  addition 
to  my  cabinet  of  curios  of  Rev.  M.  D.  Early,  superintendent 
of  missions  for  the  State  of  Texas.  He  is  also  managing 
editor  of  a  Baptist  periodical  whose  name  I  disremember. 
My  discovery  of  Early  was  purely  an  accident.  He  was 
out  on  the  "Katy"  road,  giving  the  Iconoclast  a  "roast"  that 
made  the  paint  on  the  car-ceiling  curl.  He  lamented  that 
people  persisted  in  purchasing  such  a  paper,  while  that  into 
which  he  poured  his  sacred  lucubrations  would  not  sell.  As 
he  talked  his  indignation  grew  until  he  was  telling  his 
troubles  to  the  entire  car.  The  tearful  lamentations  of  Jere- 
miah and  the  uncanny  yodel  of  Jonah  were  as  nothing  to 
the  heart-ache  which  Supt.  Early  poured  forth  because  of 
the  literary  perversity  of  the  American  people.  He  insisted 
that  he  had  never  read  a  copy  of  the  Iconoclast  and  "would 
not  do  so,  yet  declared  it  awfully  immoral,  which  proves  that 
Early  is  a  great  man.  He  does  not  have  to  acquire  knowl- 
edge by  patient  industry  like  other  people,  but  takes  it  by 
absorption  as  the  sponge  does  stale  beer  on  a  mahogany  bar, 
and  when  he  wants  to  leak  it  he  has  only  to  squeeze  his 
nice  soft  head.  Like  the  patient  ox  and  the  megalophanous 
ass,  Early  is  guided  by  instinct. 

I  regret  that  the  good  man  cannot  secure  patrons  for 
his  paper.  If  the  copy  I  have  seen  be  a  fair  sample,  the 
public  is  missing  much  by  giving  it  the  frozen  face.  It  is 
almost  as  interesting  and  equally  as  coherent  as  the  ser- 
mons of  Sin-Killer  Griffin,  or  the  editorial  page  of  the 
Houston  Post.  Reading  it  were  like  standing  in  the  vortex 
of  chaos  and  trying  to  size  up  the  phenomena.  It  is  the 
province  of  intellectual  topsy-turvy,  where  the  living  lie  dor- 
mant and  the  dead  do  gibber  in  the  streets.  When  the 
writers  are  serious  the  reader  is  convulsed,  and  when  they 
uncork  their  wit  the  wooden  tobacco  signs  weep.  It  is 
a  journalistic  rara  avis  that  none  with  a  taste  for  the  bizarre 
should  let  go  by.  Now  is  the  time  to  subscribe.  I  am  de- 
termined to  work  up  such  a  circulation  for  the  Missionary 
Mistake  that  Supt.  Early  need  no  longer  subsist  on  pennies 
torn  from  the  toy  savings  banks  of  babes.  It  may  be  well 
enough  for  small-fry  preachers  to  fill  their  lank  bellies  "with 
candy  money  coaxed  from  kids  in  the  name  of  Christ ;  but 
a  man  calling  himself  a  journalist  should  be  above  such 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  .      373 

shameful  business.  Of  the  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dol- 
lars collected  annually  in  this  country  for  the  ostensible  pur- 
pose of  informing  the  Ahkoond  of  Swat  that  Christ  is  dead, 
by  far  the  greater  part  comes  from  the  thin  purse  of  poverty 
and  the  chubby  hand  of  childhood.  What  becomes  of  this 
cash  ?  I  am  told  that  $2,500  per  annum  goes  to  pay  the  sal- 
ary of  this  one  State  Superintendent.  That  represents 
250,000  pennies  per  year  taken  from  children's  pockets.  If 
each  state  has  a  missionary  superintendent  and  Early 's  is 
the  average  salary,  here  is  a  snug  item  of  $112,500  per 
annum  paid  men  by  the  very  poor  to  ride  about  the  country 
and  advertise  the  Iconoclast.  Then  there  is  the  national 
organization,  the  secretaries  and  other  salaried  officers,  not 
to  mention  the  money  appropriated  to  the  support  of  mis- 
sionary journals  guiltless  of  readers,  and  to  pay  pet  pub- 
lishing houses  for  the  printing  of  tracts  and  other  utterly 
useless  tommy  rot.  Think  of  the  little  tin  savings  banks  de- 
spoiled to  supply  the  missionary  fund !  And  not  one  dollar 
in  three  collected  ever  gets  east  of  Castle  Garden,  while  the 
small  percentage  that  does  sift  abroad  might  just  as  well  be 
squandered  here  at  home,  for  the  so-called  labors  of  our 
foreign  missionaries  have  had  about  as  little  effect  on 
"paganism"  as  Bro.  Early's  paper  on  the  public.  It  has 
been  estimated  by  men  who  have  spent  much  time  abroad, 
that  it  cost  $14,600  to  convert  a  Buddhist  to  Protestant 
Christianity,  and  nearly  double  that  sum  to  pull  a  Mussul- 
man loose  from  his  prophet.  Yet  while  we  are  peddling 
high-priced  saving  grace  in  pagan  lands,  our  own  country 
is  cursed  with  godless  heathen  and  reeking  with  crime,  and 
in  the  garrets  of  our  great  cities  starving  mothers  give  the 
withered  breast  to  dying  babes.  It  will  be  time  enough  to 
carry  bibles  to  barbarians  when  our  own  children  are  pro- 
vided with  bread. 

The  Protestant  missionaries  have  made  precious  little 
progress  in  their  attempt  to  convert  the  "heathen,"  but  they 
have  done  much  to  engender  bitterness  and  precipitate  fa- 
natical outbreaks,  such  as  those  recently  witnessed  in  China, 
and  now  making  a  hell  of  Armenia.  As  a  rule  the  Catholic 
missionaries  adapt  themselves  to  the  customs  of  the  country 
and  win  the  respect  of  the  people.  They  have  sufficient  tact 
to  appeal  to  the  taste  of  barbarians  by  impressive  cere- 
monies, and  aid  their  understanding  by  the  use  of  religious 
symbols,  while  others  attempt  to  cram  into  the  heads  of  in- 
tellectual infants  abstruse  tenets  that  puzzled  even  the 
scholastics.  They  substitute  the  host  for  heathen  charms, 
the  crucifix  for  the  caaba-stone,  and,  by  teaching  savage 
people  the  gentle  arts  of  peace,  bring  them  gradually  to  a 


374  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

full  realization  of  the  love  and  power  of  God.  How  far 
"the  plotting  Jesuit  stoops  to  conquer,"  what  "unholy  com- 
promises he  makes  with  heathendom"  I  do  not  know ;  but 
experience  has  amply  proven  that  the  Catholic  missionary 
is,  while  his  Protestant  brother  is  not,  capable  of  combating 
successfully  the  dark  superstitions  of  semi-savagery.  The 
former  can  go  alone  among  the  most  murderous  tribes  and 
win  his  way;  the  latter  must  be  protected  from  outrage  by 
the  double-shotted  guns  of  his  government.  A  Catholic 
mission  makes  for  peace;  a  Protestant  mission  is  a  storm- 
center  of  physical  strife.  I  am  not  a  Catholic — all  my  edu- 
cation and  environments  make  for  Protestantism ;  but  the 
whole  truth  should  be  told,  however  it  may  hurt.  The  re- 
former, like  the  surgeon,  must  sometimes  be  cruel  in  order 
to  be  kind.  The  Protestant  missionaries  begin  wrong.  They 
denounce  as  crass  heathendom  everything  that  runs  counter 
to  their  creed,  whether  it  be  paganism  or  a  differentiation 
of  their  own  religious  cult.  They  affect  a  superiority  to 
the  people  they  are  sent  to  serve,  insult  their  holiest  tradi- 
tions, and  when  this  brutish  folly  and  unbridled  insolence 
results  in  violence  to  themselves,  appeal  to  their  home  gov- 
ernment for  protection  and  preach  a  war  of  extermination. 
They  are  usually  forced  upon  barbarous  nations  as  was 
opium  upon  "Pagan  China"  by  "Christian  England,"  and 
protected  by  ships  of  war  while  they  denounce  people  who 
dissent  from  their  religious  dogma. 

About  two  years  ago  a  Baptist  missionary  stationed  in 
Mexico — and  living  on  the  fat  of  the  land  by  the  same  means 
that  Dr.  Early  receives  his  $2,500  salary — issued  a  pamphlet 
grossly  insulting  to  the  people  of  that  Republic.  He  was 
mobbed  by  the  outraged  populace  and  sentenced  by  the 
courts  to  acquire  the  art  of  courtesy  in  the  penitentiary. 
Of  course  a  tremendous  roar  anent  this  "Mexican  atrocity" 
was  made  to  the  Ame.ric.an  government,  and  the  consul-gen- 
eral succeeded  in  securing  his  release.  He  protected  him 
from  the  mob  and  landed  him  safely  on  the  soil  of  Uncle 
Sam,  when  Mr.  Missionary  at  once  began  a  tirade  of  abuse 
of  Catholics  in  general  and  Mexicans  in  particular.  The 
diplomat  said  quietly:  "Had  Mexico  given  you  your  just 
deserts  she  would  have  shot  you  as  a  professional  mischief- 
maker  or  caged  you  for  life  as  a  malicious  damphool.  I 
extricated  you  from  the  penitentiary  and  protected  you  when 
you  were  scared  to  death  and  afraid  to  run.  My  mother 
was  a  Catholic.  Now  take  my  advice  and  head  for  the 
rising  sun." 

That  is  a  fair  sample  of  Protestant  missionary  endeavor 
in  both  the  Occident  and  the  Orient.  That's  what  the  kids 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  375 

are  giving  up  their  toys  and  tidbits  for!  Our  theological 
cxportations  belong  to  the  same  class  with  Early — men  who 
condemn  without  investigation;  who  consider  that  in  the 
little  knots  on  the  end  of  their  necks  God  has  cached  all  the 
wisdom  of  the  world.  They  are  the  intellectual  heirs  of 
those  Smart  Alecks  who  condemned  Christ  unheard,  poison- 
ed Socrates  on  an  idle  supposition  and  refused  to  even  con- 
sider the  Copernican  theory  lest  they  get  an  idea  into  their 
fat  heads  that  would  fracture  their  theological  hats. 


GOLD,  SILVER  AND  GAB. 
TALKING  OUR  INDUSTRIES  TO  DEATH. 

It  was  said  of  old  that  "speech  is  silver  and  silence  is 
golden."  Yet  people  wonder  that  Cleveland  has  to  sell 
bonds  to  keep  the  "reserve"  intact,  while  the  supply  of  sil- 
ver seems  to  be  inexhaustible!  Clearly  the  parity  of  the 
two  metals  is  impossible  until  this  generation  applies  a 
Westinghouse  brake  to  its  tireless  jawbone. 

The  wordy  war  now  raging  between  the  gold  and  silver 
advocates — the  "robbers"  and  the  "repudiators,"  the  "soap- 
tails,"  and  "tool  of  Wall  Street" — indicate  that  the  fool- 
killer  is  enjoying  a  furlough.  Deafened  by  the  universal 
din,  wading  neck  deep  in  the  turgid  tide  of  dialectical  ditch- 
water,  I  fain  would  exclaim  with  Mercutio,  "A  plague  on 
both  your  houses !" 

In  the  name  of  the  great  horned  beast,  what  is  this  ear- 
splitting,  nerve-destroying  cackle  all  about  ?  The  currency  ? 
— and  not  one  in  ten  thousand  of  those  who  are  forcing  so 
much  foul  air  thro'  their  faces  could  define  a  "dollar"  to 
avoid  being  damned!  It's  a  political  war  for  pie,  rather 
than  a  legitimate  controversy  anent  our  currency.  There's 
just  one  jackass  on  earth  with  longer  ears  than  the  free- 
silver  agitator  who  isn't  after  office,  and  that's  the  goldite 
who's  weeping  anent  "repudiation"  while  he  hasn't  a  dollar 
at  interest.  The  two  should  be  tethered  out  in  the  Amer- 
ican desert,  where  their  braying  would  disturb  nobody,  and 
they  could  comfortably  kick  each  other  to  death.  I  some- 
times think  that  the  great  American  public  keeps  its  head 
open  so  much  that  the  sun  shines  into  its  bazoo  and  sours 
its  brain. 

There  is  no  "currency  problem"  outside  the  minds  of  a 
few  plotting  politicians,  who  want  "pap,"  and  their  dupes, 
jyho  eagerly  embrace  every  opportunity  to  air  their  igno- 


376  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

ranee.  While  featherless  geese  have  gabbled,  business  men 
cut  the  knot  of  Gordius.  The  case  of  gold  vs.  silver  is  now 
of  precious  little  more  importance  to  this  people  than  that 
of  Bardell  vs.  Pickwick. 

Commerce  has  practically  removed  our  exchange  media 
beyond  the  jurisdiction  of  congress,  and  is  now  giving  us 
an"  elastic  currency,  which  adapts  itself  automatically  and 
infallibly  to  the  requirements  of  the  country.  The  occupa- 
tion of  governmental  money  is  almost  gone.  It  has  been 
supplanted  by  what  some  economists  call  a  "deposit  cur- 
rency," but  which  I  prefer  to  nominate  a  mercantile  money. 
If  money  be  but  "a  tool  that  trade  works  with — an  exchange 
medium" — then  is  our  commercial  or  deposit  currency,  by 
means  of  which  93  per  cent,  of  all  exchanges  are  effected, 
entitled  to  be  classed  as  money.  However,  we  will  not 
pause  in  the  midst  of  the  howling  babelian  mob  to  split  hairs 
— there  are  too  many  damphools  trying  to  "save  the  coun- 
try" by  the  science  of  definition. 

More  than  a  hundred  years  ago  Dr.  Adam  Smith,  the 
greatest  of  all  economists — barring,  of  course,  those  Solo- 
monic twins,  Hardy  and  Dudley,  of  Texas — advised  gov- 
ernments that  they  need  not  worry  much  anent  the  currency, 
as  commerce  is  competent  to  provide  itself  with  ample  ex- 
change media ;  and  there  is  certainly  less  occasion  now  than 
then  for  political  intermeddling. 

Year  by  year  commercial  paper  has  been  doing  more  and 
more  of  our  money  work ;  year  by  year  it  has  been  rendering 
governmental  currency  of  less  and  less  importance,  until 
to-day  we  find  Cleveland  and  Carlisle,  Stewart,  Peffer,  and 
all  their  paladins  and  peers  tearing  their  blessed  undershirts 
snent  an  exchange  media  employed  only  in  the  most  trifling 
transactions,  representing  less  than  7  per  cent,  of  our  volume 
of  business !  Think  of  making  a  red-hot,  hell-roaring  polit- 
ical "issue"  anent  the  amount  of  copper  in  the  penny  [  Yet 
the  cent  coinage  bears  about  the  same  relation  to  the  volume 
of  governmental  money  that  the  latter  does  to  the  entire 
currency  of  commerce.  Hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars  are 
received  and  paid  out  every  day  without  the  shifting  of  a 
coin,  the  transfer  of  a  paper  dollar.  Checks  and  drafts  have 
so  far  supplanted  the  old-time  "money  current  with  the  mer- 
chant" that  the  cashiers  of  great  business  concerns  almost 
forget  the  existence  of  a  national  currency. 

Buying  and  selling,  it  must  be  remembered,  is  but  a  con- 
venient method  of  barter,  and  commerce  naturally  seeks 
the  best  possible  intermediary.  In  olden  time  gold  and  sil- 
ver, being  indestructible  commodities  and  representing  large 
values  in  small  bulk,  constituted  the  exchange  media.  To 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  377 

avoid  the  trouble  of  weighing  and  testing  with  every  trade 
ihe  weight  and  fineness  were  stamped  on  each  piece  of 
metal,  and  it  thus  became  money.  As  civilization  progress- 
ed, paper  representatives  were  substituted  for  the  cumbrous 
metals,  and  exchange  thereby  expedited.  The  next  im- 
provement in  the  trade-tool  was  the  bank  check  or  draft, 
which  is  but  the  shadow  of  a  shade — the  promise  of  an  in- 
dividual, which  may  be  exchanged  at  the  option  of  the 
holder  for  a  promise  of  the  government.  It  does  the  nec- 
essary money-work  as  well  as  gold,  and  far  more  expedi- 
tiously  than  any  other  exchange  medium  yet  devised. 

The  money  issued  by  government  amounts  to  about  two 
billions.  As  it  is  equal  to  less  than  7  per  cent,  of  the  money- 
work  required  by  commerce,  we  may  reasonably  infer  that 
it  is  supplemented  by  more  than  28  billions  of  commercial 
currency,  making  an  actual  circulating  media  of  some  30 
billions ;  yet  we  are  asked  by  the  silverites  to  believe  that  the 
country  will  go  to  hades  awhooping  if  half  a  billion  more 
is  not  added  to  this  enormous  sum,  while  the  goldites  are 
equally  certain  that  such  inflation  would  amount  practically 
to  a  repudiation  of  all  debts! 

I  implore  both  parties  to  this  idiotic  controversy  to  be 
calm.  Opening  the  mints  to  the  white  metal  could  not  in- 
flate, nor  would  the  utter  destruction  of  all  silver  coin  con- 
tract the  volume  of  our  currency.  Commerce  will  use  no 
more  than  it  needs,  while,  if  we  may  believe  Adam  Smith 
and  the  evidence  of  our  own  eyes,  it  will  have  as  much  as 
its  necessities  may  require.  If  the  volume  be  sufficient  you 
cannot  force  government  money  into  the  channels  of  trade 
without  displacing  an  equal  amount  of  commercial  cur- 
rency. Contract  the  volume  of  governmental  money  and 
commerce  at  once  provides  a  substitute.  It  were  strange 
indeed  if  the  Yankee,  with  all  his  shrewdness,  could  not 
manage  to  "swap"  corn  for  cotton  and  soap  for  sad-irons 
except  by  the  grace  of  an  omnium-gatherum  of  pot-house 
politicians  yclept  the  American  congress!  It  is  to  ex- 
peditiously  effect  exchanges  that  we  need  an  intermediary 
— a  "'wheel  of  circulation."  Whatever  serves  this  purpose 
well  is  "good  money,"  tho'  made  of  the  hickory  shirt-tails 
of  Texas  Populists ;  that  which  serves  it  ill  is  "bad  money/* 
tho'  it  be  gold  of  Ophir  or  pearls  of  Ind. 

"But,"  I  am  told,  "the  almighty  dollar  must  be  back  of 
every  check  and  draft,  just  as  it  is  behind  the  greenback 
and  silver  certificate."  Quite  true ;  but  what  is  a  dollar?  It 
is  something  that  was  never  seen  of  man — was  never  coined 
or  counted.  It  is  a  pure  abstraction,  a  thing  supposed,  a 
term  by  which  we  express  the  relative  value  of  one  commod* 


378  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

ity  to  all  other  commodities.  It  is  our  unit  of  value,  and 
would  stand,  tho'  all  the  gold  and  silver  were  sunk  a  thou- 
sand fathoms  into  the  sea.  A  gold  coin  does  not  measure 
the  value  of  a  bushel  of  corn  one  whit  more  than  the  corn 
measures  the  value  of  the  metal  in  the  coin.  The  "dollar" 
— the  unit  of  value — measures  both,  expresses  their  commer- 
cial relation  to  all  other  commodities.  But  let  us  concede 
the  truth  of  the  dogma  of  financial  transubstantiation ;  let 
us  admit  that  25.8  grains  of  gold  constitute  a  sure-enough 
dollar  instead  of  a  foolish  trade  fiction  handed  down  to  us 
from  ancient  days :  What  then  ?  Are  our  commercial  checks 
and  governmental  greenbacks  based  only  upon  the  gold  coin 
extant  in  this  country?  or  upon  all  the  gold  in  the  world, 
coined  and  uncoined,  mined  and  unmined?  A  promissory 
note,  payable  in  gold,  is  not  based  upon  the  amount  of  yel- 
low metal  in  the  possession  of  its  maker,  but  on  his  aggre- 
gate wealth — his  ability  to  command  gold.  The  real  basis 
of  our  circulating  media,  governmental  and  commercial,  is 
the  wealth  of  the  makers.  Our  astute  economists  of  the 
Cleveland  school,  insist  that  unless  100  millions  of  gold  be 
kept  horded  up  as  a  guarantee  fund,  Uncle  Sam's  promises 
to  pay  will  not  do  the  money-work  required  of  them,  while 
93  per  cent,  of  all  our  exchanges  are  effected  by  means  of  a 
currency  made  by  the  people  from  day  to  day,  and  guiltless 
of  a  governmental  guarantee. 

The  "currency  question"  is  really  the  most  ridiculous 
craze  that  ever  took  possession  of  a  supposedly  intelligent 
people.  "Money,"  as  the  term  is  generally  understood,  is 
becoming  of  less  importance  in  the  world's  economy  every 
day.  In  a  few  years  more  our  system  of  commercial  ex- 
changes will  be  so  perfected  that  government  currency  will 
become  a  curiosity. 

One  would  suppose  from  the  tearful  plaints  of  the  "soap- 
tails,"  that  the  country  was  suffering  because  of  a  dearth  of 
white  dollars ;  from  the  clamor  of  the  "cuckoos"  anent  "our 
commercial  relations  with  gold-using  countries,"  that  our 
entire  foreign  trade  depends  upon  an  abundance  of  the  yel- 
low metal.  We  have,  in  fact,  more  silver  than  can  be  kept 
in  circulation,  and  we  cannot  use  one  dollar  of  any  kind  in 
our  international  trade.  Our  money  will  not  circulate  in 
Europe,  that  of  other  countries  does  not  pass  current  here. 
When  gold  or  silver  crosses  the  Atlantic  it  does  so  as  mer- 
chandise and  not  as  money,  as  a  commodity  and  not  as  cur- 
rency. 

The  idea  that  free  coinage  of  silver  would  cause  a  gen- 
eral revival  of  business  is  the  merest  moonshine.  We  al- 
ready have  more  trade  tools  than  trade.  Money  transfers 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  379 

the  ownership  of  wealth  from  hand  to  hand,  just  as  a  rail- 
way moves  merchandise  from  place  to  place.  When  a 
company  has  sufficient  cars  for  its  carrying  trade  were  not 
the  manager  an  ass  to  put  on  more  and  run  them  empty? 
the  theory  that  it  would  "bring  us  down  "with  a  crash  to  the 
5O-cent  silver  basis"  and  smash  the  immortal  ichor  out  of 
business,  is  unworthy  any  man  of  brains.  It  might,  in  con- 
formity with  Gresham's  law,  drive  out  gold;  but  you  cannot 
arbitrarily  change  the  commercial  standard  of  value  by  an 
alteration  of  less  than  one-seventh  of  our  circulating  media. 
To  a  fool,  a  bob-tail  may  appear  to  wag  a  big  dog ;  but  the 
wise  man  knows  that  the  canine  controls  his  caudal  append- 
age. The  war  era  certainly  demonstrated  to  both  North  and 
South  that  the  unit  of  value  may  be  one  thing,  and  the  cir- 
culating medium  quite  another. 

It  is  urged  that  the  silver  agitation  is  depressing  the  value 
of  our  bonds  and  securities  hejd  abroad.  If  true,  this  is  in- 
deed distressing;  still  it  might  be  well  to  allow  our  foreign 
creditors  to  do  haH  the  worrying.  As  we  can  pay  our  for- 
eign debts  only  with  our  products,  valued  in  the  currency  of 
the  country  to  which  they  are  carried,  the  tears  with  which 
the  goldites  are  drowning  our  transatlantic  creditors  seem 
to  be  a  wicked  waste  of  water. 

Mexico  is  frequently  cited  as  an  awful  example  o-f  the 
evils  of  free  silver.  Were  I  a  sixteen-to-oner  I'd  weave 
our  sister  Republic  into  song  and  sing  her  on  every  stump. 
I  could  pour  forth  a  strain  of  argentiferous  melody  that 
would  transform  Pefrer's  whiskers  into  a  halo  of  glory  and 
waft  him  into  the  White  House,  while  Carlisle  regretted  that 
he  sold  his  presidential  birthright  for  a  bad  mess  of  cabinet 
pottage.  We  are  told  that  wages  are  nominally  lower  in 
Mexico  than  with  us,  and  are  paid  in  currency  one-half  the 
value  of  our  coin;  that  the  country  is  poverty-stricken,  in 
debt,  and  has  to  give  two  silver  dollars  for  one  of  gold  with 
which  to  meet  the  interest  on  her  bonds.  Granted.  Now 
let's  view  the  other  side  of  the  hen-coop  awhile:  For  ten 
years  past  wages  have  been  rising  in  Mexico  and  declining 
in  Texas.  You  can  procure  more  of  the  necessaries  and 
comforts  of  life  over  there  with  a  Mexican  dollar  than  here 
with  an  American  gold  dollar.  And  that's  no  fairy  tale — 
I've  tried  it.  For  instance :  You  can  buy  a  better  cigar  for 
5  cents,  Mexican  money,  in  the  land  of  the  Montezumas,  than 
with  15  cents  gold-basis  coin  in  McLennan  county.  Mexico 
pays  her  foreign  indebtedness  with  her  products,  just  as  she 
does  her  big  sister  on  this  side  of  the  Rio  Grande.  If  she 
sometimes  buys  gold  with  her  silver  "dollars"  at  the  ratio 
of  two  to  one,  she  is  only  giving  two  pints  for  a  quart,  two 


380  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

halves  for  a  whole,  so  there's  nobody  hurt.  The  Eastern 
states  of  our  Union,  which  are  making  the  most  noise  anent 
the  "5O-cent  dollar/'  ship  their  capital  clear  across  this 
blessed  gold-standard  country  and  invest  it  in  free-silver 
Mexico.  The  country  is  still  poor  and  labor  scandalously 
cheap;  but  it  is  a  semi-barbarous  Indian  nation  that  is  but 
now  feeling  the  thrill  of  progress,  while  America  has  been 
peopled  with  the  dominant  race  for  more  than  two  centuries. 
Skilled  white  workmen  obtain  better  wages  in  Mexico — 
both  nominally  and  relatively — than  with  us ;  common  Mex- 
ican labor  receives  precious  small  pay  on  both  sides  of  the 
Rio  Grande,  but  the  least  it  gets  is  usually  more  than  it  is 
worth.  The  plea  that  free  silver  coinage  is  responsible 
for  low  wages  in  Mexico  is  rank  dishonesty.  Spain  is  the 
"mother  country"  of  Mexico  and  South  America.  She  is 
on  a  gold,  while  they  are  on  a  silver  basis.  According  to  the 
United  States  consular  reports,  the  average  weekly  wages 
paid  the  building  trades  in  Spain  is  $3.80.  In  Mexico  it  is 
$10,  in  Peru  and  Venezuela  $9.  The  same  disproportion  pre- 
vails in  all  occupations.  Italy  is  on  a  gold  basis,  and  the 
average  weekly  wages  of  her  shoemakers  is  $2 ;  in  Mexico 
and  South  American  countries  it  ranges  from  $9  to  $12,  and 
this  disproportion  extends  to  all  occupations.  Wages  are 
five  times  as  high  in  the  United  States  as  in  many  other 
countries,  some  on  a  gold,  some  on  a  silver  basis,  which 
clearly  demonstrates  that  wages  may  be  high  or  low  regard- 
less of  the  character  of  the  currency.  It  is  time  the  people 
ceased  listening  to  these  partisan  blatherskites,  with  govern- 
mental axes  to  grind,  and  considered  economic  questions 
solely  upon  their  merits. 

It  is  not  free  silver  that  is  pushing  Mexico  to  the  front 
despite  the  general  worthlessness  of  her  people.  Her  prog- 
ress is  chieflv  due  to  the  fact  that  commerce  there  knows 
pretty  well  what  it  can  depend  upon, — is  not  clapper-clawed 
every  new  moon  to  make  a  political  picnic.  Commerce  can 
adapt  itself  to  almost  any  condition  and  prosper  if  assured 
that  said  condition  will  be  permanent ;  but  when  change  is 
ever  imminent  capital  plays  a  waiting  game  or  emigrates, 
while  labor  goes  hungry  to  bed.  If  we  would  either  double 
our  tariff  tax  or  abolish  it  altogether;  if  we  would  either 
open  our  mints  to  the  unlimited  coinage  of  the  white  metal, 
or  dispense  with  silver  currency  altogether,  then  adopt  a 
constitutional  amendment  making  it  a  capital  offence  for  a 
congressman  to  even  discuss  these  matters  during  the  next 
dozen  years,  industry  would  quickly  revive  and  America 
blossom  like  a  rose.  Our  commerce  is  being  killed  by  too 
much  economic  cackle.  Everybody  from  "Cyclone"  Davis 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  3S1 

down  to  the  "Little  Giant,"  from  G.  Cleveland  up  to  "Gen- 
eral" Coxey,  is  prescribing  for  the  country,  and  prostrating 
it  with  their  feculent  lung  power.  All  it  needs  is  to  be  let 
alone.  Men  and  brethren,  go  cork  yourselves. 


WOMAN  IN  JOURNALISM. 

This  subject  is  at  present  receiving  a  great  deal  of  at- 
tention from  writers  of  both  sexes,  the  women  insisting 
that  they  are  doing  much  to  elevate  journalism,  while  not 
a  few  male  critics  flatly  accuse  them  of  bringing  the  craft 
into  contempt.  The  time  is  not  yet  come  to  correctly  esti- 
mate woman's  worth  or  worthlessness  in  this  new  field 
of  her  endeavor.  She  is  not  thoroughly  "broken  in  har- 
ness ;"  not  educated  to  the  elimination  of  sex  in  the  prac- 
tice of  her  profession.  We  have  as  yet  few  women  who, 
in  the  terminology  of  the  craft,  are  competent  to  "hold 
down"  any  department  of  a  great  daily ;  but  we  have  a 
veritable  swarm  of  female  scribblers  and  scrawlers  lay- 
ing claim  to  the  journalistic  toga.  The  South  can  boast 
but  one  "lady  journalist"  in  the  strict  construction  of  that 
term ;  and  this  rara  avis  in  newspaperdom  is  a  Texas 
product.  I  allude,  of  course,  to  Julia  Truitt  Bishop,  now 
of  New  Orleans. 

The  late  Mrs.  Nicholson,  also  of  the  Crescent  City,  was, 
I  believe,  a  newspaper  proprietor  and  thrifty  business 
manager  rather  than  a  working  editor;  and  your  thor- 
oughbred newspaper  man  does  not  consider  "the  gang 
down  stairs"  even  distantly  related  to  the  brotherhood  of 
the  "brainery."  They  are  pariahs,  altogether  without  the 
pale — mere  hucksters  for  the  creative  power.  Mrs.  Bishop 
is  competent  to  "stop  a  gap"  in  any  department  of  a  great 
newspaper,  from  the  composing  room  to  the  sanctum  of 
the  chief.  There's  a  force  and  finish  to  all  her  work  that 
adds  charm  even  to  a  sluggish  market  report  and  makes 
the  most  pitiful  sassiety  slop  palatable.  Her  mind  is  pe- 
culiarly masculine.  She  has  nothing  in  common  with  that 
crowd  of  petticoated  scribblers  who  are  "padding"  so 
many  of  our  Southern  dailies  with  inane  drivel.  It  is 
somewhat  remarkable  that  in  all  that  has  been  written  of 
late  about  the  "lady  journalists"  of  the  South  her  name 
has  not  been  so  much  as  mentioned.  The  Will  Allen  Drom- 
goozles  and  other  noisy  purveyors  of  literary  hogwash 
are  dragged  in  on  every  occasion ;  but  the  impression  ap- 
pears to  be  general — because  she  works  so  quietly  and  so 


382  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

well — that  Madame  Bishop  is  a  man.  Such  women — wo- 
men who  do  the  work  of  men  in  the  making  of  great 
newspapers  and  refrain  from  mounting  to  the  housetop  to 
exhibit  themselves  as  abnormalities  —  are  certainly  a 
credit  to  the  craft;  but  candor  compels  the  admission  that 
they  are  few  and  far  between.  As  a  rule  women  are  either 
dilettanti  in  journalism  or  professional  panders  to  an  un- 
healthy literary  appetite.  Thus  far  the  newspaper  labor 
of  the  Southern  ladies  has  been,  for  the  most  part,  con- 
fined to  chronicling  the  inconsequential  doings  of  society, 
inflicting  school-girl  essays  on  an  inoffensive  public,  or- 
ganizing press  clubs  and  throwing  bouquets  at  them- 
selves. Publishers  employ  them  to  keep  tab  on  Mrs.  Ham- 
fat  Krupper  and  sound  the  alarm  when  Chappie  Chry- 
santhemum changes  his  cravat ;  not  because  they  can  do 
this  work  better  than  their  brothers,  but  because  they 
will  do  it  cheaper — and  a  self-respecting  male  jour- 
nalist is  apt  to  jump  such  a  job.  A  number  of  sensational 
sheets,  like  the  unsavory  nuisance  known  as  the  New 
York  World,  have  employed  women  to  fall  off  ferry-boats, 
get  locked  up  in  lunatic  asylums  or  girdle  the  globe  alone 
and  without  a  change  of  lingerie,  then  spill  their  ever 
useless  and  ofttimes  offensive  experiences  upon  the  pub- 
lic. Women  have  actually  been  detailed  by  such  panders 
to  the  prurient  as  Josef  Spewlitzer  to  interview  pugilists, 
flirt  in  the  parks  with  professional  mashers,  visit  hovels 
of  prostitution — to  subject  themselves  not  only  to  certain 
insult,  but  to  the  dangers  of  criminal  assault — to  add 
spice  to  "great  family  journals."  The  female  pencil  push- 
ers of  whom  we  hear  the  most  are  built  on  the  model  of 
Nellie  Bly.  Personally  they  may  be  pure  as  the  lilies  of 
the  field  for  aught  I  know;  but  their  neurasthenic  slum- 
gullion  is  no  credit  to  their  sex.  It  is  even  more  mere- 
tricious than  such  putrescent  papers  as  the  Police  Gazette, 
for  it  is  usually  cloaked  with  a  specious  morality  that 
gives  it  entree  to  the  home,  while  the  Gazette  stops  at  the 
lo-cent  barber-shop  and  the  nigger  saloon.  To  call  these 
sensation-mongers  "journalists"  were  equivalent  to  desig- 
nating a  faith-cure  fraud  as  a  physician.  According  to 
Webster  any  regular  writer  for  the  press  is  a  journalist; 
but  the  term  is  applied  by  the  craft  only  to  those  who  can 
transform  a  few  sheets  of  blank  paper  into  a  mirror  of  the 
world.  Col.  McCullagh  of  the  Globe-Democrat  once  de- 
fined journalism  as  "knowing  where  hell  will  break  loose 
and  having  a  reporter  on  the  spot."  Magazine  and  sketch 
writers  are  not  journalists  in  the  usual  acceptance  of  the 
term.  Unquestionably  many  bright  and  noble  women  are 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  383 

employed  in  minor  capacities  on  legitimate  newspapers. 
They  are  useful  or  they  would  not  be  retained.  Some  of 
them  may  develop  into  Greeleys  or  Bennetts,  Danas  ^or 
McCullaghs  for  aught  I  know;  but  while  in  this  peculiar 
field  of  ephemeral  literature  a  number  of  women  have  ac- 
quired unsavory  notoriety,  none  have  attained  to  em- 
inence. Woman's  experience  in  journalism  has  thus  far 
proven  even  more  unsatisfactory  than  her  attempts  upon 
other  professions.  All  the  great  women  lawyers  and  doc- 
tors, scientists  and  essayists,  politicians  and  preachers 
may  be  counted  on  the  fingers  of  the  two  hands.  They 
are  never  path-finders  in  the  great  field  of  knowledge.  In 
all  the  hoary  centuries  woman  has  originated  no  religious 
cult,  made  no  great  discovery,  enunciated  no  fundamental 
law.  As  a  poet,  dramatist  and  novelist  she  has  risen  high ; 
but  far  above  and  beyond  the  most  exalted  of  her  sex 
stand  the  thousand  immortelles.  Women  are  flocking  in- 
to journalism  and  medicine  in  larger  numbers  than  into 
the  other  professions.  Why  I  know  not,  unless  it  be  that 
these  offer  greatest  opportunity  for  charlatanism.  They 
are  rapidly  appropriating  to  themselves  the  dirty  work  of 
both  professions — the  unhealthy  sensationalism  of  the  one 
and  abortion  practice  of  the  other.  The  ratio  of  female  to 
male  physicians  is  probably  less  than  I  to  100,  yet  compe- 
tent authorities  estimate  that  one-half  the  crimes  against 
motherhood  must  be  laid  at  the  door  of  the  "lady"  doc- 
tors. The  ratio  of  women  to  men  in  newspaper  work  is 
probably  less  than  I  to  12;  yet  a  careful  examination  of 
the  "great"  dailies  will  demonstrate  that  at  least  half  the 
intellectual  slime  that  is  befouling  the  land  is  fished  out  of 
the  gutter  by  females. 


ADAM  AND  EVE. 

After  God  had  expended  five  days  creating  this  little 
dog-kennel  of  a  world,  and  one  in  manufacturing  the  re- 
mainder of  the  majestic  universe  out  of  a  job-lot  of  po- 
litical boom  material,  he  "planted  a  garden  eastward  in 
Eden,  and  there  he  put  the  man  he  had  formed."  Adam 
was  at  that  time  a  bachelor,  therefore,  his  own  boss.  He 
was  monarch  of  all  he  surveyed  and  his  right  there  was 
none  yet  to  dispute.  He  could  stay  out  and  play  poker  all 
night  in  perfect  confidence  that  when  he  fell  over  the 
picket  fence  at  5  g.  m.  he  would  find  no  vinegar-faced  old 
female  nursing  a  curtain  lecture  to  keep  it  warm,  setting 


384  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

her  tear- jugs  in  order  and  working  up  a  choice  assortment 
of  snuffles.  There  were  no  lightning-rod  agents  to  in- 
veigle him  into  putting  $100  worth  of  pot  metal  cork- 
screws on  a  $15  barn.  He  didn't  care  a  rap  about  the  "law 
of  rent,"  nor  who  paid  the  "tariff  tax,"  and  no  political 
Buzfuz  bankrupted  his  patience  trying  to  explain  the  sil- 
ver problem.  He  didn't  have  to  anchor  his  smoke-house 
to  the  center  of  gravity  with  a  log  chain,  set  a  double- 
barrelled  bear  trap  in  the  donjon-keep  of  his  hennery  nor 
tie  a  brace  of  pessimistic  bull-dogs  in  his  melon  patch,  for 
the  nigger  preacher  had  not  yet  arrived  with  his  adjust- 
able morals  and  omnivorous  mouth.  No  female  commit- 
tees of  uncertain  age  invaded  his  place  of  business  and 
buncoed  him  out  of  a  double  saw-buck  for  the  benefit  of 
a  pastor  who  would  expend  it  seeing  what  Parkhurst  saw 
and  feeling  what  Parkhurst  felt.  Collectors  for  dry-goods 
emporiums  and  military  parlors  did  not  haunt  him  like  an 
accusing  conscience,  and  the  pestiferous  candidate  was 
still  happily  hidden  in  the  womb  of  time  with  the  picnic 
pismire  and  the  partisan  newspaper.  Adam  could  express 
an  honest  opinion  without  colliding  with  the  platform  of 
his  party  or  being  persecuted  by  the  professional  heresy- 
hunters.  He  could  shoot  out  the  lights  and  yoop  without 
getting  into  a  controversy  with  the  chicken-court  and  be- 
ing fined  one  dollar  for  the  benefit  of  the  state  and  fleeced 
out  of  forty  for  the  behoof  of  thieving  officials.  He  had 
no  collar-buttons  to  lose,  no  upper  vest  pockets  to  spill 
his  pencils  and  his  patience,  and  his  breeches  never  bag- 
ged at  the  knees.  There  were  no  tailors  to  torment  him 
\vith  scraps  of  ancient  history,  no  almond-eyed  he-wash- 
er-woman to  starch  the  tail  of  his  Sunday  shirt  as  stiff  as 
a  checkerboard. 

Adam  was  more  than  100  years  old  when  he  lost  a,  rib 
and  gained  a  wife.  Genesis  does  not  say  so  in  exact  words, 
but  I  can  make  nothing  else  of  the  argument.  Our  first 
parents  received  special  instructions  to  "be  fruitful  and 
multiply."  They  were  given  distinctly  to  understand  that 
was  what  they  were  here  for.  They  were  brimming  with 
health  and  strength,  for  disease  and  death  had  not  yet  come 
into  the  world.  Their  blood  was  pure  and  thrilled  with 
the  passion  that  is  the  music  of  physical  perfection — yet 
Adam  was  130  years  old  when  his  third  child  was  born.  If 
Adam  and  Eve  were  of  equal  age  a  marriage  in  American 
"high  life" — the  mating  of  a  scorbutic  dude  with  a  mil- 
liner's sign — could  scarce  make  so  poor  a  record.  After 
the  birth  of  Seth  the  first  of  men  "begat  sons  and  daughters" 
— seems  to  have  become  imbued  with  an  ambition  to  found 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  385 

a  family.  As  the  first  years  of  a  marriage  are  usually  the 
most  fruitful,  we  may  fairly  conclude  that  our  common 
mother  was  an  old  man's  darling.  Woman  does  not  ap- 
pear to  have  been  included  in  the  original  plan  of  creation. 
She  was  altogether  unnecessary,  for  if  God  could  create  one 
man  out  of  the  dust  of  the  earth  without  her  assistance  he 
could  make  a  million  more — could  keep  on  manufacturing 
them  as  long  as  his  dust  lasted.  But  multiplication  of 
"masterpieces"  was  no  part  of  the  Creator's  plan.  Adam 
was  to  rule  the  earth  even  as  Jehovah  rules  the  heavens.  As 
there  is  but  one  Lord  of  Heaven,  there  should  be  but  one 
lord  of  earth — one  only  Man,  who  should  live  forever,  the 
good  genius  of  a  globe  created,  not  for  a  race  of  marauders 
and  murderers  but  for  that  infinitely  happier  life  which  we 
denominate  the  lower  animals.  This  beautiful  world  was 
not  built  for  politicians  and  preachers,  kings  and  cuckolds; 
but  for  the  beasts  and  birds,  the  forests  and  the  flowers,  and 
over  all  of  life,  animate  and  inanimate,  the  earthly  image 
of  Almighty  God  was  made  the  absolute  but  loving  lord. 
The  lion  should  serve  him  and  the  wild  deer  come  at  his 
call.  The  bald  eagle,  whose  bold  wings  seem  to  fan  the 
noonday  sun  to  fiercer  flame,  should  bend  from  the  empy- 
rean at  his  bidding,  and  the  roe  bear  him  over  land  and 
sea  on  its  broad  pinions.  As  his  great  Archetype  rules  the 
Cherubim  and  Seraphim,  so  should  Man,  a  god  in  minia- 
ture, reign  over  the  earth-born,  the  inhabitants  of  a  lesser 
heaven.  As  no  queen  shares  God's  eternal  throne,  so  none 
should  divide  the  majesty  of  earth's  diadem.  There  is 
neither  marrying  nor  giving  in  marriage,  we  are  told, 
among  the  angels.  They  rise  above  sex,  into  the  realm  of 
the  purely  spiritual,  scorning  the  sensual  joys  that  are  the 
heritage  of  bird  and  beast,  for  intellectual  pleasures  that 
r.ever  pall;  and  why  should  Man,  the  especial  object  of 
God's  providence,  be  grosser  than  his  ministers? 

Were  I  a  poet  I  would  ask  no  grander  theme  than  Adam's 
first  century  upon  the  earth — that  age  of  gold  when  Man 
was  sufficient  unto  himself.  A  century  undisputed  master 
of  the  world!  A  century  of  familiar  converse  in  Eden's 
consecrated  groves  with  the  great  First  Cause — the  om- 
nipresent and  omnipotent  God.  Picture  one  day  of  such 
existence!  Ambition  and  Avarice,  Jealousy  and  Passion, 
those  demons  that  have  deluged  the  world  with  blood  and 
tears,  have  no  place  in  Adam's  peaceful  bosom.  He  is  not 
in  the  Grove  of  Daphne,  where  lust  is  law,  but  in  the 
Garden  of  God  where  love  is  life.  His  subjects,  not  dumb 
as  now.  or  speaking  a  language  strange  to  our  dull  ears, 
greet  him  as  he  comes  forth  at  break  of  day  from  his 


386  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

aromatic  bower.  A  thousand  feathered  songsters  drown  his 
soul  in  melody  divine,  while  every  bud  and  blossom,  a  liv- 
ing censer,  sways  in  the  balmy  breath  of  morn  and  pours 
forth  its  grateful  perfume.  The  forest  monarch  lays  his 
massy  head  on  Adam's  knee,  the  spotted  leopard  purrs 
about  him  and  the  fawn  nestles  between  his  feet.  High 
above  the  Caucasian  peaks  a  condor  poises  motionless  in 
mid- heaven,  the  unrisen  sun  gilding  him  as  with  beaten 
gold.  Now  the  saw-like  summits,  cloud-kissing  and  crowned 
with  eternal  snow,  burst  into  the  brilliant  sea  and  gleam 
like  the  brow  of  God,  while  the  purple  mists  are  drawn  up 
from  the  deep  valleys  as  tho'  the  giants  fain  woud  hide 
from  earth  their  splendors,  reserving  them  alone  for  heaven. 
Higher  and  higher  wheels  the  great  sun,  driving  the  river 
mist  before  it  and  sending  down  through  the  softly  whis- 
pering foliage  a  thousand  shafts  of  burnished  gold  that  seek 
out  the  violet,  drain  the  nectareous  dew-drop  from  its 
chance  and  kiss  the  grape  until  its  youthful  sap  changes  to 
empurpled  Wood  beneath  the  passionate  caress.  In  the 
cool  shadows  by  the  great  spring — a  magic  mirror  in  whose 
pellucid  depths  are  reflected  heaven's  imperial  concave  and 
Eden's  virgin  splendors — God  walks  familiar  with  Adam 
as  with  a  younger  brother,  explains  to  him  the  use  and 
beauty  of  all  that  is,  and  spreads  before  his  wondering 
eyes  Creation's  mighty  plan. 

And  yet  God  suspects  that  Adam  is  not  content,  for  we 
hear  him  soliloquizing:  "It  is  not  good  that  the  man  should 
be  alone."  The  clay  of  which  the  first  of  men  is  formed  is 
beginning  to  assert  itself.  He  watches  the  panther  fondling 
his  playful  cubs,  the  eagle's  solicitude  for  his  imperial 
brood  perched  on  the  beetling  crag,  and  the  paternal  in- 
stinct awakes  within  him.  He  hears  the  mocking-bird 
trilling  to  his  mate,  the  dove  pitying  the  loneliness  of  Crea- 
tion's mystic  lord,  and  a  fierce  longing  for  a  companionship 
dearer  than  he  has  yet  known  takes  possession  of  him.  To 
the  swarming  life  about  him  his  high  thoughts  are  in- 
comprehensible; in  God's  presence  his  soul  swoons  be- 
neath an  intellectual  glory  to  which  he  cannot  rise,  en- 
cumbered as  he  is  by  earthly  clay.  He  sends  his  swift- 
winged  messenger  forth  to  summon  before  his  throne  every 
fowl  of  the  air  and  every  beast  of  the  field.  Down  thro' 
the  gates  of  the  garden  they  come,  countless  thousands,  and 
pass  before  their  king.  "But  for  Adam  there  was  not  found 
a  helpmeet  for  him."  Sick  at  heart  he  turns  away.  The 
sunset  has  lost  its  glory,  the  spheres  their  music,  life  its 
sweetness.  The  beams  of  the  moon  chill  his  blood  and 
Arcturus  leads  forth  his  shining  sons  but  to  mock  his  bar- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  387 

renness.  The  flowers  that  wreathe  his  couch  stifle  him  with 
their  sensuous  perfume  and  he  flies  from  the  nightingale's 
passionate  song  as  the  slave  flees  the  scourge.  Thro'  the 
dark  paths  and  over  the  moss-grown  boulders  he  stumbles 
on,  across  the  fields  where  the  fire-flies  glow  like  showers 
of  flame,  beneath  the  tall  cedars  whose  every  sigh  seems 
drawn  from  the  depths  of  an  accepted  lover's  soul.  Ex- 
hausted, he  sinks  down  where  the  waters  burst  from  the 
foundations  of  the  earth  and,  dividing  into  four,  seem  to 
reiterate  in  ceaseless  monotone,  "Behold  my  mighty  sons." 
A  feeling  of  utter  loneliness,  of  hopeless  desolation  falls 
upon  him,  such  as  hammers  at  the  heart  when  Death  has 
despoiled  us  of  all  that  Life  held  dear.  He  pillows  his 
head  upon  the  sleeping  lion  and  shields  himself  from  the 
sharp  night  air  with  the  tawny  mane.  A  cub,  already  hunt- 
ing in  dreams,  comes  whining  and  nestles  down  over  his 
heart,  while  Love's  brilliant  star  pours  its  splendors  full 
upon  his  face.  The  long  black  lashes,  burdened  with  un- 
shed tears,  drop  low,  a  drowsiness  falls  upon  him  and 
Adam  sleeps.  The  heavens  are  rolled  together  like  a  scroll 
and  God  descends  in  the  midst  of  a  legion  of  Angels,  bright- 
est of  whom  is  Lucifer,  Son  of  the  Morning,  not  yet  forever 
fallen.  "It  is  not  good  that  the  man  should  be  alone."  The 
fitful  slumber  deepens;  the  winds  are  hushed;  the  song  of 
the  nightingale  sinks  lower  and  lower,  then  ceases  with  an 
awe-struck  sigh;  the  lynx  and  the  jackal,  the  horned  owl 
and  the  scaly  serpent  slink  away  into  the  deepest  wood, 
while  Love's  emblem  glows  like  a  globe  of  molten  gold. 
Then  comes  a  burst  of  melody  divine,  beneath  which  the 
earth  trembles  like  a  young  maid's  heart  when,  half  in 
ecstacy,  half  in  fear,  she  first  feels  burning  upon  her  own 
the  bearded  lips  of  her  life's  dear  lord.  It  is  the  Morning 
Stars  singing  together!  There  is  a  perfumed  air  on  Adam's 
cheek,  sweeter  than  ever  swooned  in  the  rose  garden  of 
Cashmere  or  the  jasmine  bowers  of  Araby  the  Blest;  there 
is  a  touch  upon  his  forehead  softer  than  the  white  dove's 
fluttering  bosom;  there  is  a  voice  in  his  ear  more  musical 
than  Israfeel's  marshaling  the  Faithful  in  fields  of  aspho- 
del, crying,  "Awake  my  lord!"  and  the  first  of  men  is 
looking  with  enraptured  soul  upon  the  last,  best  work  of  an 
all-wise  God,  a  beautiful  woman. 


388  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

THE  LOCAL  OPTION  LUNACY. 

[Mr.  Brann  was  billed  to  lecture  at  Hillsboro,  Texas,  on  the  eve 
of  the  local  option  election.  The  Antis  took  possession  of  the  opera 
house  and  changed  his  subject.  Following  is  a  synopsis  of  his 
address:] 

Ladies  and  Gentlemen:  I  came  here  to  talk  on  "Gall/* 
and  I  find  that  I  m/ust  speak  on  "Prohibition" — a  distinc- 
tion without  a  difference.  I  hold  in  my  hand  a  printed 
challenge  from  the  Prohib  committee  to  meet  Hon.  W.  K. 
Homan  in  joint  debate  to-night — a  challenge  issued  when 
they  were  well  aware  that  I  was  to  lecture  here  this  even- 
ing. They  felt  certain  that  I  would  not  forego  a  lecture  fee 
to  mix  it  with  them  without  money  and  without  price;  but 
they  -didn't  know  their  man.  I'm  always  willing  to  make 
some  sacrifice  to  secure  the  luxury  of  a  red-hot  intellectual 
scrapping  match.  We  proposed  to  make  it  a  Midshipman 
Easy  duel,  a  three-cornered  fight — Brothers  Homan  and 
Benson  vs.  the  "Apostle,"  but  they  wiggled  in  and  they 
wiggled  out,  they  temporized  and  tergiversated  until  we  saw 
there  wasn't  an  ounce  of  fight  in  the  whole  Prohibition 
crew — that,  after  their  flamboyant  defi,  we  couldn't  pull'  em 
into  a  joint  debate  with  a  span  of  mules  and  a  log-chain. 
I  last  saw7  Bro.  Bill  Homan  at  Hub-hard  City.  He  was 
getting  out  of  town  on  the  train  I  got  in  on — after  prom- 
ising that  he  would  remain  over  and  meet  me.  In  his 
harangue  the  night  before  he  told  his  auditors  that  I'd  sim- 
ply "abuse  the  church  and  make  ugly  faces."  Well,  I  didn't 
abuse  the  church  on  that  occasion,  nor  upon  any  other, 
albeit  I  sometimes  make  it  a  trifle  uncomfortable  for  some 
of  its  unworthy  representatives.  I  cannot  help  "making 
ugly  faces."  It's  my  misfortune,  not  my  fault.  I  was 
born  good  and  Bro.  Bill  was  born  beautiful.  He's  the 
Adonis  of  the  rostrum,  the  Apollo  Belvidere  of  the  bema. 
He's  so  dodgasted  "purty"  that  the  children  cry  for  him. 
Had  he  come  to  earth  two  thousand  years  ago  some  Gre- 
cian goddess  would  have  stolen  him.  Bro.  Bill  couldn't 
make  an  ugly  face  if  he  tried.  If  he  ever  catches  sight  of 
his  own  personal  pulchritude  as  reflected  in  some  trans- 
lucent lake,  I  much  fear  that  he'll  meet  with  the  fate  of 
Narcissus.  Some  of  you  Prohibs  don't  know  who  Nar- 
cissus was.  Well,  he  was  one  of  those  fellows  whom  cold 
water  killed. 

I'm  no  professional  anti-Prohibition  spouter,  and  have 
been  jumped  up  here  without  preparation ;  but  it  occurs 
to  me  that  it  requires  no  careful  rehearsal  of  set  orations 
before  an  amorous  looking  glass,  no  studied  interming- 
ling of  pathos,  bathos  and  blue  fire  to  demolish  the  Pro- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  389 

hibition  fallacy.  Liberty  is  ever  won  by  volunteers;  the 
shackles  of  political  and  religious  slavery  are  forged  by 
the  hands  of  hirelings.  Prohibition  cannot  withstand  the 
light  of  logic,  the  lessons  of  experience,  nor  the  crucible 
of  the  commonest  kind  of  common  sense. 

Milton  tells  us  that  the  angel  Ithuriel  found  the  devil 
"squat  like  a  toad,"  distilling  poison  in  the  ear  of  sleep- 
ing Eve;  that  he  touched  the  varmint  with  his  spear,  and 
forthwith  Satan  resumed  his  proper  shape  and  fled  shriek- 
ing out  of  Paradise.  Prohibition  is  another  evil  spirit  that 
is  breeding  trouble  in  man's  Eden;  but  when  touched  by 
the  spear-point  of  legitimate  criticism  its  disguise  falls 
away,  and  we  see,  instead  of  a  harmless  toad,  a  malic- 
ious Meddlesome  Mattie  stirring  up  strife  and  bitterness 
among  brethren. 

Whenever  a  man  opposes  the  plans  of  the  Prohibs  he  is 
forthwith  denounced  as  an  enemy  of  morality,  a  slave  of 
the  saloons,  a  hireling  of  the  Anheuser-Busch  Brewing  As- 
sociation. Well,  I  had  rather  be  the  emissary  of  the  saloons 
than  the  assassin  of  liberty,  the  slave  of  a  brewer  than  the 
blind  peon  of  ignorant  prejudice,  while  if  morality  consists 
in  attending  to  my  neighbor's  business  to  the  neglect  of 
my  own,  then  I'm  ferninst  it,  first,  last  and  all  the  time. 
As  a  good  German  friend  of  mine  once  remarked.  "Dot 
beoples  who  lives  py  stones  shouldn't  trow  some  glass 
houses,  haind  id?"  Who  is  making  money  out  of  this 
agitation?  The  professional  Prohibs.  Did  you  ever  know 
of  one  of  these  gentry  making  a  Prohibition  speech  except 
for  filthy  lucre — unless  he  was  electioneering  for  office  or 
taking  subscribers  for  a  cold-water  journal  ?  They  are  the 
cattle  who  are  out  for  the  stuff;  they  are  the  mercenaries — 
the  n/en  who  pump  foul  air  thro'  their  faces  for  a  fee.  Did 
you  ever  hear  of  a  man  getting  paid  for  defending  the  doc- 
trine of  personal  liberty?  Did  you  ever  see  a  collection 
taken  up  at  an  anti-prohibition  meeting  to  pay  some  im- 
portant spouter  for  pointing  out  to  the  people  their  political 
duty?  (A  voice:  "Nix.")  And  you  never  will.  These 
prohibition  orators  have  the  impudence  to  denounce  me 
as  "the  peon  of  the  rum  power"  while  I  am  fighting  the 
battles  of  personal  liberty  at  my  own  cost,  yet  not  a  dad- 
burned  one  of  'em  will  open  his  head  unless  paid  for  his 
wind-power !  They  are  "reformers"  for  revenue  only. 

I  have  noticed  that,  as  a  rule,  men  who  speak  against 
Prohibition  have  never  been  in  the  gutter,  while  those  who 
pick  up  a  precarious  livelihood  by  chasing  the  "Rum  De- 
mon" around  a  stump  have  usually  been  his  very  humble 
slaves.  I  have  noticed  that  the  men  who  oppose  Prohibi- 


390  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST      . 

tion  are  usually  the  solid,  well-to-do  men  of  the  community, 
the  heavy  tax-payers  the  men  upon  whom  the  schools,  the 
churches  and  the  state  chiefly  depend  for  support,  while 
those  who  champion  it  on  the  rostrum,  are  usually  living  in 
some  way  upon  the  industry  of  others.  The  man  who  has 
brains  enough  to  make  money  and  keep  it  usually  has  too 
much  sense  to  be  a  Prohibitionist.  It  is  the  fellows  who 
have  made  a  failure  of  life;  who  live  on  donations;  who 
weep  over  the  world's  wickedness,  then  take  up  a  collection 
to  enable  them  to  get  to  the  next  town;  who  haven't  suf- 
ficient moral  stamina  to  stay  sober,  that  are  prating  of 
Prohibition.  If  we  required  a  property  franchise  you 
couldn't  muster  five  thousand  Prohibition  votes  between 
the  Sabine  and  the  Rio  Grande. 

And  yet  we  are  told  that  licensing  the  saloons  is  a  bad 
business  investment;  that  it  costs  more  than  it  comes  to; 
that  the  way  to  abolish  poverty  is  to  abrogate  the  liquor 
license  law.  Strange  that  the  Prohibs  should  possess  such 
transcendent  business  heads  and  such  empty  stomachs! 
Doubtless  the  drinking1  of  liquor  adds  to  the  cost  of  our  ju- 
diciary; doubtless  it  is  responsible  for  some  crime;  but  the 
question  at  issue  is  not  one  of  liquor-drinking  vs.  teetotalism 
—it  is  a  question  of  drinking  licensed  liquor  or  Prohibition 
aquafortis.  It  is  not  a  question  of  reducing  the  cost  of  our 
courts,  but  of  making  liquor  bear  its  due  proportion  of 
the  burdens  it  foists  upon  the  people. 

I  am  neither  the  friend  nor  enemy  of  liquor,  any  more 
than  I  am  the  enemy  or  friend  of  buttermilk.  I  have  drank 
both  a  third  of  a  century  and  have  been  unable  to  see  that 
they  did  me  any  especial  good  or  harm.  I  was  never  befud- 
dled on  the  one  nor  foundered  on  the  other,  and  have 
managed  to  get  along  very  well  with  both.  Whether  in 
eating  or  drinking,  a  man  should  keep  his  brains  above 
his  belt,  and  if  he  cannot  do  that  he's  a  precious  poor  ex- 
cuse for  an  uncrowned  King,  an  American  Sovereign. 

The  statistics  furnished  by  the  Prohibition  orators  are 
fearfully  and  wonderfully  made.  It  has  been  asserted  in 
this  campaign  that  a  million  Americans  die  every  year 
of  the  world  from  the  effects  of  strong  drink — and  all  this 
great  army  goes  direct  to  hell.  The  man  who  made  that 
statement  is  a  preacher,  and  presumably  familiar  with  the 
Bible;  but  he  has  evidently  overlooked  the  story  of  An- 
anias and  Saphira.  I  learn  from  the  United  States  census 
report,  which  I  hold  in  my  hand,  that  in  the  very  year  in 
which  this  Prohibition  apostle  claims  a  million  Americans 
were  slain  by  strong  drink,  the  statistical  experts  could  find 
but  1,592  victims  of  John  Barleycorn.  The  doctors  have 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  391 

ever  claimed  that  more  people  die  of  over-eating  than  of 
over-drinking,  and  the  census  report  bears  out  the  asser- 
tion, for  in  the  year  in  which  1592  people  were  filed  away 
by  "alcoholism,"  30.094  deaths  are  accredited  to  "dis- 
eases of  the  digestive  organs."  What  causes  indigestion? 
Over-eating,  or  eating"  food  difficult  of  digestion.  Now  I 
submit  that  if  Brothers  Benson,  Homan,  et  al,  are  trying 
to  save  the  people  of  this  land  from  premature  graves  and 
bear  the  stock  of  the  coffin  trust,  they  should  direct  their 
crusade  against  indigestible  food, — reduce  the  people  of 
this  Nation  by  means  of  statutory  law  to  a  diet  of  corn- 
bread  and  buttermilk.  Let  them  bring  all  their  ballistae 
and  'battering-arms  to  bear  upon  the  toothsome  mince  pie, 
the  railway  sandwich,  the  hard-boiled  egg  and  pickled  pigs' 
feet — that  pestilence  that  walks  in  darkness.  Indigestion 
is  indeed  a  fruitful  source  of  crime.  It  casts  the  black 
shadow  of  chronic  pessimism  athwart  the  sunniest  soul 
and  transforms  happy  homes  into  dens  of  despair.  It  makes 
men  irritable,  morose,  and  prompts  them  to  homicide. 
Who  can  tell  how  much  misery  and  crime  the  wretched 
cookery  of  female  Prohibitionists  is  responsible  for?  How 
the  cost  of  our  criminal  courts  might  be  reduced  if  these 
she-reformers  would  but  attend  to  their  kitchens  and  dish 
up  for  their  lords  and  masters  grub  that  would  more  easily 
assimilate  with  the  gastric  juices !  If  a  man  be  fit  for 
treasons,  stratagems  and  spoils  when  loaded  with  a  half 
a  pint  of  red  licker,  what  must  be  the  condition  of  his 
mind  and  miorals  when  he's  full  of  sodden  pie,  half  baked 
beans  and  soda-biscuits  that  if  fired  from  a  cannon  would 
kill  a  bull? 

The  theory  that  strong  drink  is  an  unmixed  evil  that 
must  be  abolished,  is  not  in  accord  with  the  genius  of  this 
government,  which  would  give  to  the  individual  untram- 
meled  liberty  in  matters  concerning  only  himself.  Ex- 
perience has  proven  Prohibition  a  rank  failure  and  the  cus- 
toms of  mankind  from  the  very  dawn  of  history  brand  it 
a  rotten  fraud.  The  people  of  every  age  and  clime  have 
used  stimulants,  and  we  may  safely  conclude  that,  despite 
the  Prohibs,  they  will  be  employed  so  long  as  man  exists 
upon  the  earth.  Banish  liquor  and  man  will  find  a  substi- 
tute— even  tho'  it  be  opium,  morphine  or  cocaine.  It  is 
said  that  Thor,  the  great  northern  god  of  war,  once  tried 
to  lift  what  he  supposed  was  an  old  woman,  but  found  to 
his  sorrow  that  it  was  a  mighty  serpent  which,  in  Norse 
mythology,  encircles  the  world.  The  Prohibs  are  warring 
upon  what  they  foolishly  imagine  to  be  frivolous  habit  of 
man,  but  will  yet  learn  that  they  are  running  counter  to 


392  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

an  immutable  decree  of  God — are  trying  to  alter  the  phys- 
ical constitution  of  the  human  race  by  means  of  local  op- 
tion elections. 

So  far  as  I  am  personally  concerned,  I  would  care  but 
little  if  every  ounce  of  liquor  was  banished  from  the  earth 
and  its  method  of  manufacture  forever  be  forgotten;  but  I 
object  to  having!  a  lot  of  he-virgins  and  female  wall-flowers 
sit  at  my  muzzle  and  dictate  how  I  shall  load  myself.  If 
I'm  an  American  sovereign  I  propose  to  be  supreme  auto- 
crat of  my  own  stomach.  When  I  want  advice  regarding 
what  I  shall  eat  and  what  I  shall  drink  I'll  consult  a  doctor 
of  medicine  instead  of  a  doctor  of  divinity. 

I  do  not  oppose  Prohibition  because  I  am  the  friend 
of  liquor,  but  because  I  am  the  friend  of  liberty.  I  would 
rather  see  a  few  boozers  that  a  race  of  bondmen.  I  am 
not  interested  in  preserving  the  liquor  traffic,  but  I  am 
interested  in  the  perpetuation  of  those  principles  that  en- 
noble a  people  and  make  manly  men — men  who  rely  upon 
themselves  for  their  social  salvation  rather  than  upon  a 
public  policy  which  may  change  with  the  phases  of  the 
moon  or  the  arrival  of  some  new  demagogue  from  distant 
parts.  I  have  but  little  use  for  men  who  must  swing  to  the 
apron- strings  of  a  public  errand-dame  or  sro  to  the  dogs. 
Let  us  reserve  the  nursery  for  children.  Men  whom  we 
cannot  trust  with  the  guardianship  of  their  own  appetites 
should  not  be  allowed  to  run  at  large.  How  would  you 
young  ladies  like  to  marry  "American  Sovereigns"  who 
must  'be  tied  up,  like  a  lot  of  mangy  cayuses  when  white 
clover  is  in  blossom  to  keep  'em  from  catching  the 
"slobbers?" 

But,  the  Prohibs  inform  us,  the  brightest  men  of  the 
world  are  ruined  by  strong  drink.  They  assure  us  that 
"it  is  not  a  question  of  intellect,  but  of  appetite."  What 
was  judgment  given  us  for  if  not  to  control  our  appetites? 
If  appetite  be  paramount  to  judgment  why  do  we  hang 
rape-fiends?  Let  me  tell  you  the  idea  that  the  brainiest 
men  of  the  world  die  drunkards  is  the  merest  moonshine. 
If  only  men  of  genius  drank  liquor  a  one-horse  still  would 
supply  the  demand  and  be  idle  six  months  in  the  year. 
Take  the  thousand  greatest  men  the  world  has  produced 
— the  Thousand  Immortelles — and  not  2  per  cent,  of  them 
died  drunkards,  yet  98  per  cent,  of  them  drank  liquor.  If 
the  Prohibs  have  ever  produced  an  intellect  of  the  first 
class  they  must  have  hidden  it  under  a  bushel.  Its  pos- 
sessor is  probably  one  of  those  village  Hampdens  or  mute 
inglorious  Miltons  of  whom  the  poet  sings.  The  Prohibs 
don't  run  to  great  men — they  run  to  gab. 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  393 

Stripped  of  all  its  superfluous  trappings,  the  thesis  of 
Prohibition  is  simply  this :  "Some  men  drink  to  excess ; 
therefore  no  one  should  be  permitted  to  drink  at  all.  The 
human  race  must  reserve  its  inherent  tastes  and  time-hon- 
ored habits  lest  some  wild-eyed  jay  get  on  a  jag."  The 
question  at  issue,  the  riddle  for  us  to  unravel,  is  simply 
this :  Can  we  afford  to  sacrifice  human  liberty  to  save  the 
sots?  Is  the  game  worth  the  candle,  and  if  we  burn  the 
candle  will  we  win  the  game  ? 

The  Pros  assure  you  that  Prohibition  prohibits.  It 
does.  It  prohibits  the  sale  of  liquor  and  supplies  its  place 
with  coffin  paint.  It  prohibits  the  sale  of  good,  ice-cold 
beer  and  gives  us  forty-rod  bugjuice.  Theories  are  not 
worth  a  continental  when  slammed  up  against  conditions. 
What  I  hear  I  take  with  a  grain  of  salt;  but  what  I  see 
that  I  do  know.  I  tell  you  candidly  that  next  to  a  pretty 
woman  I  love  a  cocktail.  If  the  liquor  is  good  and  the 
barkeeper  understands  his  business,  I  consider  it  a  thing 
to  thank  God  for — occasionally.  Like  religion,  a  little  of 
it  is  an  excellent  thing,  but  an  overdose  will  put  wheels 
in  your  head.  I  have  never  yet  been  in  a  Prohibition  pre- 
cinct where  I  needed  to  go  thirsty  if  I  had  the  price  of  a 
pint  flask  concealed  about  my  person — and  my  stomach 
could  stand  the  poison. 

When  high  license  prevailed  in  Hillsboro  you  had  a 
dozen  saloons,  each  contributing  to  the  revenues  of  the 
state,  the  country,  the  municipality  and  the  school  fund. 
You  voted  local  option  in,  and  now  you've  thirty-two  unli- 
censed and  unregulated  doggeries  selling  rot-gut  to 
schoolboys  and  contributing  not  one  cent  to  the  public 
revenues.  The  cost  of  your  courts  has  increased,  drunk- 
enness was  never  so  common,  brawls  never  so  frequent. 
It  is  said  that  even  fools  can  learn  in  the  bitter  school  of 
experience ;  but  there  be  idiots  upon  whom  even  such  les- 
sons are  lost.  But  you  say,  "Vote  local  option  in  again 
and  we'll  elect  officers  who  will  enforce  the  laws."  Have 
you  yet  to  learn  that  a  law  cannot  be  enforced  that  is  not 
steadily  upheld  by  public  opinion  ?  And  do  you  not  know 
that  there's  not  a  considerable  town  in  Texas  where  pub- 
lic opinion  demands  at  all  times  a  strict  enforcement  of 
such  a  law  ?  If  you  really  desire  to  have  a  sober  city,  raise 
a  purse  and  hire  the  operators  of  your  blind  tigers  to  place 
their  booze  on  the  sidewalk  in  buckets,  accompanied  by 
tin  dippers  and  signs,  "Help  yourself — funerals  furnished 
free."  Men  would  then  run  away  from  the  very  smell  of 
the  stuff  who  now  sneak  up  dirty  alleys  and  pay  15  cents 


394  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

for  the  privilege  of  poisoning-  themselves.  On  the  same 
principle  some  men — and  they  are  not  all  anti-Prohibs 
either — will  leave  a  beautiful  and  charming  wife  to  mope 
at  home  while  they  are  flirting  with  some  female  whose 
face  would  frighten  a  freight-train.  Man  is  just  like  a  dog 
— only  more  so.  Perhaps  a  marauding  old  muley  cow- 
would  be  a  better  comparison.  A  muley  cow  will  eat  any- 
thing on  this  majestic  earth  that  she  can  steal,  from  a 
hickory  shirt  to  a  Prohibition  newspaper,  and  if  she  can't 
get  it  thro'  her  neck  she  will  chew  it  and  suck  the  juice. 
That's  human  nature  to  a  hair.  Man  values  most  what  is 
hardest  to  get.  And  until  you  reverse  the  law  of  nature 
the  legitimate  effect  of  Prohibition  will  be  blind  tigers  and 
back-door  sneaks,  the  breeding  of  spies  and  the  sale  and 
consumption  of  an  infinitely  meaner  brand  of  booze. 

That  liquor  has  done  a  vast  amount  of  damage  I  freely 
concede ;  but  shall  we  banish  everything  that  has  added  to 
the  mighty  tide  of  human  ills?  Then  what  have  we  left? 
A  hole  in  the  atmosphere.  God  has  not  bequeathed  to  man 
an  unmixed  blessing  since  he  expelled  him  from  Paradise. 
Even  woman,  his  last,  best  gift,  hath  grievous  faults.  The 
very  first  one  brought  into  this  world,  according  to  Pagan 
legend  and  Holy  Writ,  was  the  author  of  all  our  ills.  But 
for  her  we  would  be  to-day  in  a  blessed  state  of  innocence, 
where  mothers-in-law  and  millinery  bills,  political  issues 
and  itinerant  preachers,  mental  freaks  and  professional 
reformers,  jim-jams  and  jag  cure  joints  disturb  us  not.  In- 
stead of  all  this  toil  and  trouble  we  would  lie  like  gods  re- 
clining on  banks  of  asphodel,  pull  the  heavenly  bell-cord 
when  hungry  and  live  on  from  age  to  age,  ever  young 
Apollos.  Perhaps  the  Almighty  made  a  mistake  when  he 
gave  to  man  a  wife,  and  another  when  he  gave  him  the 
vine ;  but  when  he  corrects  'em  I'll  crawl  off  the  earth. 

Woman  has  filled  the  world  with  war's  alarms,  and  the 
bacchic  revel  has  ended  in  the  brawl.  Troy  flamed  because 
Menelaus'  wife  was  false,  and  Philip's  all-conquering  son 
surrendered  to  the  brimming  bowl.  Ever  is  our  dearest 
joy  wedded  to  our  direst  woe.  The  same  air  that  comes 
stealing  round  our  pillow,  laden  with  the  sensuous  per- 
fume of  a  thousand  flowers,  rips  our  towns  to  pieces  and 
turns  our  artesian  wells  inside  out.  The  same  rains  that 
fructify  the  earth  pour  the  destructive  flood.  The  same  in- 
tellectual power  that  bends  nature's  mighty  forces  to 
man's  imperial  will,  enables  him  to  trample  upon  his 
brethren.  The  same  reckless  courage  that  breaks  the  ty- 
rant's chain  ofttimes  stains  the  hand  with  a  brother's 
blood.  The  same  longing  for  woman's  sweet  companion- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  395 

ship  that  leads  these  to  rear  happy  homes — sacred  shrines 
from  which  incense  mounts  night  and  day  to  the  throne 
of  Omnipotent  God — goads  those  to  lawless  love.  The 
empurpled  juice  that  warms  the  cold  heart  and  stirs  the 
sluggish  blood  that  gives  to  the  orator  lips  of  gold,  to  the 
poet  promethean  fire  abused  doth  breed  the  hasty  quarrel 
and  make  the  god  a  beast. 

It  was  said  of  old  that  a  middle  course  is  safest  and 
best,  and  the  axiom  still  holds  good.  All  the  Utopias  thus 
far  inaugurated  were  greased  at  the  wrong  end.  The  fact 
that  since  the  dawn  of  history — aye,  so  far  back  that 
legend  itself  is  lost  in  the  shadows  of  the  centuries — the 
winecup  has  circulated  about  the  social  board,  proves  that 
it  supplies  a  definite,  an  inherent  human  want — that  it  fills 
a  niche  in  the  world's  economy.  One  of  the  first  acts  of 
a  people  after  passing  the  pale  of  savagery  is  to  supply 
itself  with  stimulants.  Why  this  is  so,  I  do  not  pretend  to 
know ;  but  so  it  is,  and  it  argues  that  the  Prohibition 
apostles  have  tackled  about  as  big  a  contract  as  did  Dame 
Partington — that  they  had  best  "pluck  a  few  feathers 
from  the  wing  of  their  fancy  wherewith  to  supply  the  tail 
of  the  judgment." 

The  Prohibs  declare  that  999  out  of  every  1,000  crimes 
are  caused  by  liquor.  Suppose  this  to  be  true:  Does  it 
take  the  cussedness  out  of  liquor  to  drive  it  from  the  front 
room  into  the  back  alley?  Is  it  not  a  fact  that  the  worst 
brand  of  "fighting  booze"  is  dispensed  at  the  illicit  dog- 
gery? But  the  Prohibs  are  as  badly  at  sea  anent  their 
criminal  statistics  as  in  the  mortuary  report.  Compara- 
tively few  of  the  great  criminals  of  this  country  ever 
drank  liquor  to  excess.  But  a  small  per  cent,  of  those  in 
our  penitentiaries  were  confirmed  drunkards  when  accord- 
ed the  hospitality  of  the  state.  When  a  man  is  convicted 
of  crime  he  naturally  seeks  a  scapegoat.  Adam  threw  all 
the  blame  of  that  apple  episode  on  Eve,  simply  because 
liquor  had  not  then  been  invented  and  he  could  not  plead 
an  Edenic  jag  in  extenuation.  I  was  once  interviewing  a 
man  who  had  just  been  sentenced  to  the  penitentiary  for 
horse-theft.  I  thought  that  perhaps  a  cocktail  would  cause 
him  to  talk  freer,  and  had  one  smuggled  to  his  cell.  He 
declined  it,  saying  that  he  had  never  taken  but  one  drink 
of  liquor  in  his  life,  and  that  made  him  sick. 

"But,"  said  I,  "you  told  the  court  that  you  were  crazy 
drunk  when  you  committed  the  crime." 

"Yes,"  he  replied,  "I'd  rather,  be  thought  a  drunkard 
than  a  natural  born  d d  thief." 

That  led  me  to  investigate.   I  interviewed  the  recorder 


396  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

of  Galveston,  the  chief  of  police,  the  sheriff  of  the  county, 
the  district  attorney  and  several  other  officials.  We  went 
over  the  records,  and  the  habits  of  each  offender  were 
carefully  inquired  into.  As  a  matter  of  course  the 
"drunks  and  disorderlies"  made  an  imposing  list;  but  we 
were  unable  to  trace  the  influence  of  liquor  in  more  than 
3  per  cent  of  the  serious  crimes  committed  in  Galveston 
city  and  county  during  five  years. 

The  great  cry  of  the  Prohibs  is,  "Savei  the  boys ;  re- 
move temptation  from  their  path."  Well,  that's  all  right, 
if  youVe  got  a  putty  boy ;  but  if  I  had  a  boy  who  wanted 
to  go  on  a  whizz  and  wasn't  smart  enough  to  find  the 
means  despite  all  the  Prohibs  in  Christendom,  I'd  send 
him  to  the  insane  asylum.  I  was  reading  the  other  day  of 
some  college  youths  who  were  watched  so  closely  that 
they  couldn't  obtain  liquor,  and  proceeded  to  fill  up  on  il- 
luminating gas.  If  the  supply  of  gas  holds  out  those 
youngsters  are  likely  to  develop  into  great  Prohibition 
orators.  If  you  want  to  keep  your  boy  from  filling  a 
drunkard's  grave,  begin  by  getting  a  sure-enough  boy — 
one  whose  brain-pan  lies  above  instead  of  below  his  ears. 
Then  raise  him  right.  Don't  tell  him  that  every  man  who 
sells  liquor  is  an  emissary  of  hell,  and  that  every  man  who 
drinks  it  is  a  worthless  sot.  If  you  do,  he'll  soon  find  out 
that  you  are  a  liar  without  sufficient  intelligence  to  build 
a  dangerous  falsehood,  and  he'll  take  off  the  muzzle.  Tell 
him  the  truth  and  thereby  retain  his  confidence.  Tell  him 
that  liquor  is  a  pretty  good  thing  to  let  alone,  but  that 
millions  of  better  men  than  his  daddy  have  drank  it  and 
lived  and  died  sober  and  useful  citizens. 

Prohibtion  was  first  tried  in  the  Garden  of  Eden.  It 
proved  a  failure  there,  and  it  has  proven  a  failure  ever 
since.  It  is  not  in  accord  with  the  Christian  Bible,  the 
fundamental  law  of  the  land  or  the  lessons  of  history. 
Wine  has  been  used  in  almost  every  religious  rite  except 
Mohammedanism  and  devil  worship.  St.  Paul  recom- 
mends it,  Christ  made  and  used  it. and  God  saved  Noah 
while  letting  all  the  good  Prohibitionists  drown.  The 
Saviour  came  eating  and  drinking.  Abraham  Lincoln  de- 
clared Prohibition  "a  species  of  intemperance  within  it- 
self" and  "a  blow  at  the  very  principles  on  which  our 
government  was  founded."  General  Grant,  Thomas  Jeff- 
erson, Horatio  Seymour  and  John  Ouincy  Adams  de- 
nounced it  in  unmeasured  terms.  Who's  taking  issue  with 
these  giants  of  the  intellect?  Redlicker  Benson  of  In- 
geanny,  who  has  come  all  the  Way  to  Texas  to  tell  us  bar- 
barians what  to  do  to  be  saved — and  incidentally  pick  up 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  397 

enough  money  to  pay  for  another  "jag;"  Whoopee  Ka- 
lamity  Homan,  the  pretty  man  of  Dallas,  whose  chief  ar- 
gument is  that  I  abuse  the  churches — which  is  an  infer- 
nal falsehood ;  and  Jehovah  Boanerges  Cranfill,  an  ex- 
bum  who  aspires  to  the  presidency  of  the  United  States, 
but  couldn't  be  elected  pound-master  in  his  own  precinct. 

I  have  been  asked  why,  if  as  much  liquor  is  sold  under 
Prohibition  as  under  high  license,  the  saloonists  insist  up- 
on contributing  to  the  public  revenues.  The  answer's 
dead  easy.  The  men  who  engineer  blind  tigers  vote  the 
Prohibition  ticket.  They  contribute  to  the  campaign  fund. 
They  help  pay  the  fees  of  the  cold  water  spouters  and 
sputers.  More  liquor  is  sold  under  local  option  than  under 
high  license,  because  of  man's  natural  hankering  for  for- 
bidden fruits;  but  it  is  sold  by  a  different  class  of  men 
and  is  a  different  kind  of  booze.  It  is  sold  by  chronic  law- 
breakers, by  men  who  have  little  to  lose,  by  toughs  for 
whom  the  bat-cage  hath  no  terrors.  The  man  who  is  cap- 
able of  straddling  an  unlicensed  keg  of  bug-juice  in  a  back 
room  and  ladling  out  liquid  hell  to  little  boys,  is  quite  na- 
turally in  favor  of  Prohibition.  A  man  of  respectability, 
and  who  is  financially  responsible  for  offenses,  desires  to 
keep  within  the  limits  of  the  law.  That's  the  reason  that 
respectable  saloon  men  are  the  enemies  of  Prohibition. 

Legalize  the  sale  of  liquor  and  you  will  have  some 
crime,  no  doubt.  You  will  have  paupers  and  criminals  tc 
provide  for,  but  you'll  have  a  revenue  to  help  bear  the 
burdens.  Prohibit  it  and  you'll  have  the  burdens  without 
the  revenue.  Permit  its  sale  and  you  will  have  law-abid- 
ing citizens  engaged  in  the  traffic,  men  who  will  try  to 
make  it  decent,  who  will  take  a  pride  in  the  purity  of  their 
wares  and  the  orderliness  of  their  places ;  prohibit  it,  and 
you  will  have  a  lot  of  law-breakers  on  the  one  hand  selling 
slumgullion  made  of  cheap  chemicals  and  general  cussed- 
ness,  and  a  gang  of  spies  and  informers  on  the  other  stir- 
ring up  strife  and  entailing  costly  litigation. 

When  driven  to  the  wall ;  when  it  is  clearly  demon- 
strated that  their  doctrine  does  not  accord  with  the  genius 
of  this  government ;  when  it  is  amply  proven  that  wheve- 
ever  tried  it  has  proven  an  expensive  failure,  an  arrant 
fraud,  the  Prohibs  fall  back  upon  the  Bible.  You  rm\y 
prove  five  hundred  different  religious  dogmas  by  the 
Bible,  but  Prohibition  is  not  one  of  them.  Bro.  Homan 
declares  that  the  Old  Testament  prohibits  the  drinking  of 
wine.  It  does  not ;  but  it  does  not  make  circumcision  ob- 
ligatory, and  a  sin  of  omission  is  as  bad  as  a  sin  of  com- 
mission. If  Bro.  Homan  proposes  to  be  guided  by  the  Old 


W  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

Testament  I  beg  to  suggest  that  he  is  overlooking  a  very 
important  bit.  The  Old  Testament  commands  no  class  of 
people  to  abstain  from  wine,  except  the  Jewish  priest- 
hood, and  they  only  i^iilc  performing  their  sacred  offices. 
An  angel  of  the  Lord  did  command  the  barren  Manoah  to 
stay  sober  awhile  and  she  should  conceive  and  bear  a  son ; 
and  I  imagine  that  something  equally  as  miraculous 
might  happen  to  Luther  Benson  under  similar  circum- 
stances. David  recounts  as  one  of  God's  mercies  that  he 
giveth  water  to  the  wild  ass  and  wine  to  make  glad  the 
heart  of  man.  Solomon  sings  to  the  wine  cup  with  all  the 
ardor  of  Anacreon,  while  the  prophets  kept  the  morals  of 
Israel  toned  up  by  threats  that  a  lapse  from  virtue  would 
prove  disastrous  to  the  vineyards.  St.  Paul  advised 
bishops  and  old  women  to  take  but  little  wine.  He  also 
suggested  to  the  first  that  they  should  not  fly  into  a  pas- 
sion, and  to  the  latter  that  spreading  false  reports  about 
their  neighbors  was  not  considered  good  form.  The  Pro- 
hibs,  as  a  last  resort,  insist  that  the  wine  of  Biblical  days 
was  very  different  from  our  own — a  kind  of  circus  lemon- 
ade ;  but  it  seems  to  have  gotten  in  its  graft  on  old  Noah 
in  most  elegant  shape.  If  the  wine  of  Biblical  times  was 
so  harmless  why  did  the  sacred  writers  consider  it  neces- 
sary to  caution  people  against  drunkenness,  bid  them  be 
temperate  in  all  things — while  avoiding  teetotalism  ?  The 
only  beverage  I  can  find  mentioned  in  the  Bible  that  af- 
fected a  man  like  a  Prohibition  drink,  was  that  given  Col. 
Lot  in  the  cave  by  his  two  daughters.  It  accomplished 
what  medical  men  assure  me  was  a  miracle — and  the  Pro- 
hibs  run  largely  to  the  miraculous. 


OLD  GLORY. 
(San  Antonio,  July  4,  1893.) 

Fellow  Americans — I  have  done  pretty  much  everything 
that  a  man  may  do  and  dodge  the  penitentiary,  except  run 
for  office  and  make  Fourth  of  July  speeches.  Eulogizing 
the  Goddess  of  Liberty  were  much  like  adding  splendor  to 
the  sunrise  or  fragrance  to  the  breath  of  morn.  She  needs 
no  encomiast,  star-crowned  she  stands,  the  glory  of  Amer- 
ica, the  admiration  of  the  world. 

I  shall  make  a  bid  for  your  gratitude  by  being  brief.  In 
July  weather  the  song  of  an  electric  fan  and  the  small  voice 
of  the  soda-fount  were  more  grateful  to  the  soul  than  the 


I il< ANN,  TIIK   ICONOCLAST  399 

grandest  eloquence  that  ever  burned  on  a  Grady's  lips  of 
gold.  It  is  customary  1  believe  on  July  4  to  "make  the 
eagle  scream," — to  light  o'er  again  all  the  gory  battles  of 
the  Republic,  from  Lexington's  defeat  to  the  glorious  vic- 
tory of  the  last  election ;  but  I  am  no  Gov.  Waite,  and 
blood  to  horses'  bridles  delights  me  not.  I  would  rather 
at  any  time  talk  of  love's  encounters  than  of  war's  alarums 
— rather  bask  in  the  smiles  of  beauty  than  mount  barbed 
steeds  to  fright  the  souls  of  fearful  adversaries.  I  have  ever 
had  a  sneaking  respect  for  Grover  Cleveland  for  sending  a 
substitute  to  remonstrate  with  the  Southern  Confederacy 
while  he  played  progressive  euchre  with  the  pretty  girls. 
His  patriotism  may  not  have  soared  above  par,  but  there 
were  no  picnic  ants  on  his  judgment.  Much  as  I  love  my 
country,  I  would  rather  be  a  living  president  than  a  dead 
hero. 

I  address  you  as  "fellow  Americans,"  for  in  this  land  no 
man  of  Celtic  or  of  Saxon  blood  can  be  an  alien.  Whether 
he  were  born  on  the  banks  of  the  blue  Danube  or  by  Kil- 
larney's  lovely  lakes,  'mid  Scotia's  rugged  hills  or  on  the 
surny  vales  of  France,  he  is  bound  to  us  with  ties  of  blood ; 
he  hath  a  claim  upon  our  country,  countersigned  by  those 
brave  souls  who,  in  the  western  wilds,  gave  to  Liberty  a 
habitation  and  a  name — who  declared  that  Columbia  should 
ever  be  the  refuge  of  the  world's  oppressed, — that  all  men, 
in  whatever  country  born,  should  be  equal  before  the  law 
wherever  falls  the  shadow  of  our  flag.  There  has  of  late 
arisen  a  strange  new  doctrine  that  we  should  close  our  ports 
against  the  peoples  of  other  lands,  however  worthy  they 
anay  be;  but  I  say  unto  you  that  such  a  policy  were  to 
betray  a  sacred  trust  confided  to  us  by  our  fathers, — that 
every  honest  man  beneath  high  heaven,  every  worshipper 
at  Liberty's  dear  shrine  hath  an  inheritance  here,  and  when, 
with  uplifted  hand  he  pledges  his  life,  his  fortune  and  his 
sacred  honor  to  the  defense  of  freedom's  flag  he  becomes 
as  much  an  American  as  tho'  to  the  manner  born. 

On  occasions  such  as  this  we  of  America  are  apt  to  glor- 
ify ourselves  too  much, — to  overlook  the  origin  of  those 
elements  that  made  us  great.  When  exulting  over  our 
victories  in  war  and  our  still  more  glorious  triumphs  in 
peace,  our  progress  and  our  prosperity,  we  should  not  for- 
get that  had  there  been  no  Europe  there  would  be  no  great 
American  nation ;  that  all  the  courage  that  beats  in  the 
blood  of  Columbia's  imperial  sons,  and  all  the  wondrous 
beauty  with  which  her  daughters  are  dowered;  that  all 
the  tireless  energy  of  which  she  proudly  boasts,  and  all  the 


400  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

genius  that  gilds  her  name  with  glory  were  nurtured  for  a 
thousand  years  at  white  bosoms  beyond  the  ocean's  brine. 

The  American  nation  is  the  fair  flower  of  European  civ- 
ilization, the  petted  child  of  the  world's  old  age.  Princes 
may  be  jealous  of  her  progress  and  tyrants  read  in  her  rise 
their  own  downfall;  but  the  great  heart  of  the  people  of 
every  land  and  clime  is  hers;  to  her  they  turn  their  faces 
as  the  helianthus  to  the  rising  sun, — she  is  their  beacon 
light,  their  star  of  hope,  guiding  them  to  the  glories  of  a 
grander  day. 

It  is  natural,  it  is  right  that  on  the  nation's  natal  day  we 
should  felicitate  ourselves  on  the  sacred  privileges  we  en- 
joy— should  pay  the  tribute  of  our  respect  to  those  whose 
courage  crowned  us  with  sovereignty  and  made  us  masters 
of  our  fate ;  but  we  should  not,  as  too  often  happens,  make 
it  the  occasion  for  senseless  bravado  and  foolish  bluster. 
We  should  rather  employ  it  to  promote  good  will  among 
the  nations  of  the  earth,  to  link  together  in  a  kindlier  broth- 
erhood the  various  families  of  the  great  Caucasian  race, 
to  beat  the  barbarous  sword  into  peaceful  plowshares  and 
forever  banish  strife. 

I  sometimes  dream  that  God  has,  in  his  mercy,  raised  this 
nation  up  unto  the  world's  salvation, — the  immediate  in- 
strument of  His  grace  to  usher  in  that  age  of  gold, 

"When  the  war-drum  throbs  no  longer  and  the  battle-flags  are 

furled, 
In  the  parliament  of  man,  the  federation  of  the  world." 

I  delight  to  trace  in  the  rise  and  fall  of  nations  the  finger 
of  God,  and  strive  to  read  the  Almighty's  plan  in  the  his- 
toric page.  In  the  farthest  east  appeared  the  first  faint  light 
of  civilization's  dawn,  and  westward  ever  since  the  star 
of  empire  hath  ta'en  its  way,  while  each  succeeding  nation 
that  rose  in  its  luminous  paths  like  flowers  in  the  footsteps 
of  our  dear  Lord,  has  reached  a  higher  plane  and  wrought 
out  a  grander  destiny.  The  cycle  is  complete — the  star 
now  blazes  in  the  world's  extreme  west,  and  by  the  law  of 
progress  which  has  preserved  for  forty  centuries,  here  if 
anywhere,  must  we  look  for  that  millennial  dawn  of  which 
poets  have  fondly  dreamed  and  for  which  philanthropists 
have  prayed. 

The  awful  responsibility  of  leadership  rests  upon  us.  We 
have  shattered  the  scepter  of  the  tyrant  and  broken  the 
shackles  of  the  slave;  we  have  torn  the  diadem  from  the 
prince's  brow  and  placed  the  fasces  of  authority  in  the 
hands  of  the  people ;  we  have  undertaken  to  lead  the  human 
race  from  the  Slough  of  Despond  to  the  Delectable  Moun- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  401 

tains,  where  Justice  reigns  supreme  and  every  son  of  Adam 
may  find  life  worth  living.  Can  we  make  good  our  glorious 
promises  ?  Are  we  equal  to  the  task  to  which  we  have  given 
our  hand?  Ten  thousand  times  the  world  has  asked  this 
question,  but  there  is  neither  Dodona  Oak  nor  Delphic 
Oracle  to  make  reply — the  future  alone  can  answer.  All 
eyes  are  upon  us,  in  hope  or  fear,  in  prayer  or  protest.  The 
fierce  light  that  beats  upon  a  throne  were  as  the  firefly's  dull 
flame  to  the  lightning's  flash  compared  with  that  which 
illumes  the  every  act  of  this  champion  of  human  progress, 
this  knight  par  excellence,  this  Moses  of  the  nations. 

It  is  an  important  role  which  God  hath  assigned  to  us 
in  the  great  drama  of  life,  yet  into  a  part  so  pregnant  with 
fate  we  too  often  inject  the  levity  of  the  farce.  While 
preaching  equal  rights  to  all  and  special  privileges  to  none, 
we  pass  laws  that  divide  the  people  of  this  land  into  princes 
and  paupers,  into  masters  and  slaves.  On  July  4  we  shout 
for  the  old  flag,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  year  we  clamor  for 
an  appropriation.  While  boasting  that  we  are  sovereigns 
by  right  divine  and  equal  unto  kings,  we  hasten  to  lay  our 
hair  beneath  the  feet  of  every  scorbutic  dude  who  hither 
drifts, 

"Stuck  o'er  with  titles  and  hung  around  with  strings." 

The  soldier  who  serves  the  state  demands  a  pension, 
and  every  burning  patriot  wants  an  office.  We  boast  that 
the  people  rule,  and  office-holders  are  but  public  servants; 
yet  more  than  a  moiety  of  us  would  hang  our  crowns  on 
a  hickory  limb  and  swim  a  river  to  break  into  official  bond- 
age. Here  in  Texas  seven  distinguished  citizens  are  already 
chasing  the  governorship  like  a  pack  of  hungry  wolves 
after  a  wounded  fawn,  while  the  woods  are  full  of  brunette 
equines  who  have  taken  for  their  motto, 

"They  also  serve  who  only  stand  and  wait." 

Yes,  our  office-holders  are  indeed  our  public  servants — 
and  my  experience  with  servants  has  been  that  they  usually 
run  the  whole  shebang. 

Theoretically  we  have  the  best  government  on  the  globe, 
but  it  is  so  brutally  mismanaged  by  our  blessed  public  ser- 
vants that  it  produces  the  same  evil  conditions  that  have 
damned  the  worst.  Even  Americans  whose  forefathers 
dined  on  faith  at  yalley  Forge,  or  fought  at  Lundy's  Lane, 
have  become  so  discouraged  by  political  bossism,  so  heart- 


402  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

sick  with  hope  deferred  that  they  quote  approvingly  those 
lines  of  Pope, 

"For    forms   of    government   let    fools    contest, 
Whate'er  is  best  administered  is  best." 

While  boasting  of  popular  government,  we  suffer  our- 
selves to  be  led  about  by  self-seeking  politicians  like  a 
blind  man  by  a  scurvy  poodle;  we  have  made  partisanship 
paramount  to  patriotism — have  reserved  the  poet's  line,  and 
now 

"All  are  for  a  party  and  none  are  for  the  state." 

It  were  well  for  us  to  make  July  4  less  an  occasion 
for  self-glorification  than  for  prayerful  consideration  of  the 
dangers  upon  which  we  are  drifting  in  these  piping  times 
of  peace — dangers  that,  arise,  not  in  foreign  courts  and 
camps,  but  are  conceived  in  sin  by  the  American  plu- 
tocracy and  brought  forth  in  iniquity  by  our  own  political 
bosses.  We  have  no  longer  aught  to  fear  from  the  out- 
side world.  Uncle  Sam  can,  if  need  be,  marshal  forth  to 
battle  eight  million  as  intrepid  sons  as  those  who  crowned 
old  Bunker  Hill  with  flame  or  bathed  the  crests  of  Get- 
tysburg with  blood.  Upon  such  a  wall  of  oak  and  iron 
the  powers  of  the  majestic  world  would  beat  in  vain.  Our 
altars  and  our  fanes  are  far  beyond  the  reach  of  a  foreign 
foe ;  but  the  rock  that  recks  not  the  thunderbolt  nor  bows 
to  the  fierce  simoon,  is  swept  from  its  base  by  the  uncon- 
sidered  brook. 

No  man  can  be  a  patriot  on  an  empty  stomach ;  no 
country  can  be  secure,  I  care  not  if  Moses  make  its  con- 
stitution and  Solon  frame  its  laws,  when  half  its  people 
are  homeless  and  brawny  giants  must  beg  their  bread.  As 
far  back  as  history's  dawn  the  rise  of  the  plutocracy  and  the 
impoverishment  of  the  common  people  have  heralded  the 
downfall  of  the  state.  Thus  fell  imperial  Rome,  that  once 
did  rule  the  world,  and  Need  and  Greed  are  the  ballistae 
and  battering-rams  that  are  pounding  to-day  with  tremen- 
dous power  upon  every  throne  of  Europe  and  rocking  the 
very  civilization  of  the  world  from  turret  to  foundation 
stone. 

We  have  achieved  liberty,  but  have  yet  to  learn  in  this 
strange  new  land  the  true  significance  of  life.  We  have 
made  the  dollar  the  god  of  our  idolatry,  the  Alpha  and 
Omega  of  our  existence,  and  bow  the  knee  to  it  with  a 
servility  as  abject  as  that  of  courtiers  kissing  the  hand  of 
Kings.  As  trie  old  pagans  sometimes  incorporated  their 
lesser  in  their  greater  deities  that  they  might  worship  all 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  403 

at  once,  so  have  we  put  the  Goddess  of  Liberty  and  Saving 
Grace  on  the  silver  dollar  that  we  may  not  forget  them. 

But  before  God,  I  do  believe  that  this  selfish,  this  Mam- 
mon-serving and  unpatriotic  age  will  pass,  as  passed  the  age 
of  brutish  ignorance,  as  passed  the  age  of  tyranny.  I  be- 
lieve the  day  will  come — oh  blessed  dawn ! — when  we'll  no 
longer  place  the  badge  of  party  servitude  above  the  crown 
of  American  sovereignty,  the  ridiculous  oriflamme  of  fool- 
ish division  above  Old  Glory's  star-gemmed  promise  of 
everlasting  unity ;  when  Americans  will  be  in  spirit  and  in 
truth  a  band  of  brothers,  the  wrongs  of  one  the  concern  of 
all;  when  brains  and  patriotism  will  take  precedence  of 
boodle  and  partisanship  in  our  national  politics ;  when  labor 
will  no  longer  fear  the  cormorant  nor  capital  the  commune ; 
when  every  worthy  and  industrious  citizen  may  spend  his 
declining  days,  not  in  some  charity  ward,  but  in  the  grateful 
shadow  of  his  own  vine  and  fig-tree,  the  loving  lord  of  a 
little  world  hemmed  in  by  the  sacred  circle  of  a  home. 
There  was  a  time,  we're  told,  when  to  be  a  Roman  was 
greater  than  to  be  a  King ;  yet  there  came  a  time  when  to 
be  a  Roman  was  to  be  the  vassal  of  a  slave.  Change  is  the 
order  of  the  universe  and  nothing  stands.  We  must  go 
forward  or  we  must  go  backward — we  must  press  on  to 
grander  heights,  to  greater  glories,  or  see  the  laurels  al- 
ready won  turn  to  ashes  on  our  brow.  We  may  sometimes 
slip ;  shadows  may  obscure  our  path ;  the  boulders  may 
bruise  our  feet ;  there  may  be  months  of  mourning  and  days 
of  agony ;  but  however  dark  the  night,  Hope,  a  poising 
eagle,  will  ever  burn  above  the  unrisen  morrow.  Trials  we 
may  have  and  tribulations  sore;  but  I  say  unto  you,  oh 
brothers  mine,  that  while  God  reigns  and  the  human  race 
endures,  this  nation,  born  of  our  father's  blood  and  sancti- 
fied by  our  mother's  tears,  shall  never  pass  away. 


OUR  AMERICAN  CZARS. 

INDUSTRIAL  SLAVERY  vs.  POLITICAL  DEGRADATION. 

It  cost  forty  million  dollars  to  indulge  in  the  ridiculous 
mummery  of  crowning  a  man,  who,  for  nearly  two  years 
had  been  universally  recognized  as  Czar  of  all  the  Russias. 
That  enormous  amount  of  wealth  was  wasted  in  two  weeks 
to  gratify  the  pitiful  vanity  of  a  miserable  mortal  whom 
accident  of  birth  had  made  sovereign  of  a  poverty-stricken 
and  semi-savage  people.  An  attempt  to  feed  the  famished 


404  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

wretches  who  had  gathered  to  witness  the  barbaric  pageant, 
paid  for  with  money  wrung  from  their  own  thin  purses 
by  an  iron  hand,  causing  a  stampede  in  which  thousands 
were  killed  and  other  thousands  crippled.  Imagine  a 
slaughtered  ox  cast  among  half  a  million  hungry  wolves, 
and  you  get  an  idea  of  what  occurred  beneath  the 
glistening  windows  of  Petrovsky  Palace.  It  was  a  bread- 
riot,  a  fight  for  food  participated  in  by  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  starving  people  of  every  age  and  sex,  while  wealth 
was  being  poured  out  like  water  by  one  who,  ablaze  with 
thousands  of  costly  baubles,  was  solemnly  proclaimed  their 
divinely  ordained  guide,  philosopher  and  friend — the  father 
of  a  nation  and  defender  of  the  faith !  All  the  so-called 
Christian  countries  participated  in  this  foolish  farce,  this 
essence  of  criminal  idiocy,  this  crime  against  man  and 
offense  to  God;  yet  if  a  man  who  gives  half  his  honest 
earnings  to  feed  the  hungry  and  clothe  the  naked,  lets  slip 
an  honest  oath  or  dares  to  doubt  that  plunging  a  moral 
leper  into  a  frog-pond  with  thaumaturgic  incantations  will 
purify  his  soul — will  cause  legions  of  white-robed  angels 
to  go  chortling  up  and  down  the  sapphire  hills  of  heaven 
to  the  music  of  golden  harps,  while  the  Creator  of  the  Cos- 
mos makes  holiday — these  same  Christian  nations  rear  up 
on  their  hind  legs,  wildly  wave  their  ears  and  bray  forth 
their  hysterical  horror!  When  news  of  the  terrible  catas- 
trophe was  carried  to  the  Czar  "he  wept."  Whether  he 
used  his  million  dollar  crown  as  a  tear- jug  I  do  not  know ; 
but  the  dispatches  state  that  as  soon  as  he  could  stop  the 
lachrymose  leaks  "he  danced!"  Happy  transition  from 
boisterous  grief  to  ribald  joy!  A  woman  seven  times  wed- 
ded could  scarce  have  done  so  well !  The  fete  went  gaily 
on  within  the  gorgeous  palace,  while  the  gaunt  spectre  of 
famine  and  the  grisly  gorgon  of  Death  kept  watch  and 
ward  without.  Thus  do  extremes  meet  in  merry  Russia, 
and  variety  adds  spice  to  life  in  the  court  circles  of  the 
Czar.  Fortune's  favorites  tripped  o'er  cloth  of  gold  and 
gorged  themselves  with  honey  of  Hymettus  and  apples  of 
Hesperides,  while  the  gaunt  peasants,  who  had  fought  like 
beasts  of  prey  for  a  morsel  to  allay  Hunger's  mad'ning 
pangs,  were  piled  high  upon  the  plain.  Within,  all  light 
and  life  and  joy ;  without,  all  woe  and  wail.  In  the  palace 
the  red  wine  gushed,  precious  beyond  price;  on  the  plain 
a  warmer  tide  was  as  freely  poured  as  libations  to  the 
demons  of  Darkness  and  Death.  And  above  the  maudlin 
laughter  of  the  bacchants  and  the  pulsing  sensuous  music 
that  makes  the  blood  to  leap  like  flame,  drowning  the 
groans  of  the  wounded  and  the  wailings  for  the  dead, 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  405 

rises  the  eternal  cackle  of  the  optimists  that  all  is  well- 
that  those  who  dare  to  doubt  are  either  anarchists  or  pes- 
simists with  atribilarious  livers. 


The  gorgeous  palace  and  the  blood  soaked  plain — ah, 
that  is  Russia,  where  some  will  waste  while  others  want ; 
where  one  is  born  to  wield  a  sceptre  and  an  hundred  mil- 
lions to  be  his  beasts  of  burthen.  How  different  in  Amer- 
ica where  every  man's  a  sovereign,  and  Liberty,  Equality 
and  Fraternity — triune  transcendent ! — sits  enthroned.  Is 
it  even  so?  Have  we  here  no  Palaces  of  Petrovsky  and 
plains  of  Khodijnskoje?  No  costly  Kremlins  and  cheerless 
cots?  Have  \ve  no  Czars  to  waste  in  foolish  fetes  and 
bacchic  orgies  the  wealth  wrung  from  field  and  forest  and 
mine  by  toiling  millions?  none  who  drain  into  their  groan- 
ing coffers  the  people's  earnings,  then  display  their  provi- 
dence and  gratify  their  pride  by  flinging  an  occasional 
bone  to  those  whose  substance  they  have  consumed.  Have 
there  been  no  bread  riots  here  ? — no  grasping  by  strong  men1 
for  charity  doled  out  by  idlers  who  earn  not,  yet  whose 
Avhite  hands  are  bedecked  with  diamonds?  And  do  not, 
our  Czars  weep  for  very  pity  of  the  people's  woes, — then 
dance — prating  meanwhile  of  the  true  faith,  as  tho'  they 
were  crowned  and  sceptred?  And  do  they  not  hold  over 
the  toiling  millions  the  power  of  life  and  death — sending 
them  to  the  Ice  Hell  of  Siberia  at  their  good  pleasure,  there 
to  endure  all  the  tortures  of  the  damned?  Five  thousand 
torn  and  trampled  before  Petrovsky  Palace !  Why,  'tis  not 
the  first  time  a  crown  has  been  baptized  in  blood — not  the 
first  hecatomb  slain  by  the  demon  Hunger  that  Pride 
might  vaunt  herself.  Why  should  we  stand  aghast  "when 
the  tragedy  of  a  day  is  concentrated  beneath  the  windows 
of  a  palace  instead  of  spread  throughout  an  empire?  Bar-| 
barous  indeed  must  Russia  be  to  give  her  all  to  feed  an 
empty-headed  emperor  and  his  parasites,  then  fight  for 
food  doled  out  by  him  as  a  keeper  might  feed  a  wolfish 
pack  of  dogs!  Why  do  not  her  people  assert  their  man- 
hood and  say  to  the  Romanoffs :  "Thus  far  hast  thou  gone 
in  our  despoilment,  but  here  your  hand  is  stayed;  else  will 
we  make  a  hen's  nest  of  thy  crown  and  cage  thee  up,  even 
as  great  Ivan  did  the  conquered  princes."  Thus  do  we 
vaunt  our  "American  sovereignty"  and  talk  turgid — for- 
getful of  the  fact  that  10,000  children  die  every  year  in  the 
single  city. of  New  York  for  want  of  food  and  medicine — 
that  we  have  Czars  of  our  own,  against  whom  we  have 


406  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

not  yet  revolted !  The  nearest  we  have  come  to  it  was 
the  march  of  Coxey's  army — and  it  kept  off  the  grass. 
Herod  slew  perhaps  a  hundred  babes,  and  his  crime  be- 
came one  of  the  horrors  of  history.  How  easily  people  were 
shocked  in  those  old  days  of  ignorance!  Were  he  alive 
to-day  he  might  add  a  few  thousand  innocents  a  year  to 
his  private  graveyard  without  attracting  the  attention  of 
cither  the  police,  the  pulpit  or  the  daily  press.  Old  Dives 
leaned  back  in  his  comfortable  arm-chair,  full  of  wine  and 
walnuts,  neglected  to  offer  Lazarus  a  hand-out,  and  was 
sent  to  Hell;  but  that  was  before  Talmage  so  revised  the 
plan  of  salvation  that  plutocrats  go  to  heaven  in  Pullman 
cars.  Fortunes  of  five,  ten,  fifty,  an  hundred  millions, — 
wealth  beyond  the  dreams  of  Roman  Consuls  or  Lydian 
Kings,  and  a  mighty  multitude  ever  on  starvation's  brink — 
or  over — in  this  blessed  land  of  Equality — and  Christ! 
What  think  you?  Are  we  not  as  much  the  slaves  of  our 
Money  Kings  as  the  Russians  to  the  Romanoffs  ?  Can  you, 
my  brother  artisan,  exist  without  the  gracious  permission 
of  those  who  hold  the  purse-strings?  Cannot  Sir  Plutus 
say  to  thee,  "Go  starve  in  the  highways  and  hedges,"  and 
enforce  obedience  by  the  simple  expedient  of  stopping  your 
weekly  stipend — depriving  you  of  the  privilege  of  produc- 
ing? Are  not  our  cities  crowded  with  people  as  helpless 
and  hopeless  as  those  who  fought  for  food  before  the  Pal- 
ace of  Petrovsky?  Is  not  capital  steadily  concentrating, 
becoming  more  powerful  and  pitiless  ?  True,  "we  do  not  here 
in  the  South  feel  the  blight  of  this  plutocratic  Czarship 
much  as  yet;  but  it  is  creeping  on  like  a  social  leprosy — 
our  eleemosynary  population  becoming  proportionately 
larger  as  the  number  of  our  millionaires  increases.  Are 
we  not  becoming  Europeanized — Russianized — the  work 
already  far  advanced  in  the  older  states,  where  millions 
crv,  "You  take  my  life  when  you  take  the  means  whereby 
I  live!" 


Anarchist?  Nay,  hold  thy  peace.  The  enemy  of  order  is 
he  that  approves  a  system  all  whose  tendencies  are  toward 
a  Reign  of  Terror.  I  am  not  inciting  the  groaning  multi- 
tude to  "take  up  arms  against  a  sea  of  troubles" — at  most, 
not  fire-arms.  Blind  indeed  must  be  he  who  sees  not  that 
the  American  masses  are  being  slowly  enslaved.  Industrial 
serfs  they  are  already;  political  peons  they  are  fast  becom- 
ing. Money  is  power, — even  in  the  realm  of  politics — and 
those  possessing  power  will  assuredly  employ  it.  Have 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  407 

we  not  even  now  our  political  as  well  as  our  industrial 
"bosses" — to  whom  we  are  expected  to  yield  a  blind  obedi- 
ence? Is  it  not  notorious  that  Dives  may  secure  the  pas- 
sage of  any  law — by  city  council  or  United  States  senate — 
that  his  impudence  demands?  Has  a  single  political  plat-* 
form  been  framed  these  five-and-twenty  years,  by  any  party 
having  a  fighting  chance  to  win,  that  was  not  moulded 
and  modified  by  his  master  hand  to  suit  a  selfish  purpose? 
Is  it  not  a  fact  that  this  government  is  to-day  an  Oligarchy 
rather  than  a  Republic — dominated  by  a  coterie  of  pluto- 
crats as  surely  as  tho'  they  appointed  both  congress  and 
the  cabinet?  What  then?  Have  we  cause  to  vilipend  the 
miserable  Russian  people  ?  Shall  the  pot  animadvert  upon 
the  complexion  of  the  kettle?  Is  it  worse  to  be  subjects 
de  jure  than  serfs  de  facto?  Would  our  boasted  American 
sovereignty  smell  the  worse  by  any  other  name?  A  rem- 
edy? Why  bless  you!  I  am  no  Simon  Magus,  called  to 
renovate  the  world.  If  I  do  say  that  the  Duke  of  Argyle 
hath  the  itch,  must  I  perforce,  erect  for  him-  a  scratching- 
post?  that  a  city  was  swept  by  a  destructive  storm,  am  I 
in  duty  bound  to  tame  the  tornado  and  make  it  turn  a 
mill  ?  Every  man  to  his  trade — and  I  am  a  doctor  of  divin- 
ity, not  a  doctor  of  laws. 

*         *         * 

It  appears  to  me,  however,  that  most  of  our  economic 
M.  D/s  now  trying  to  tone  up  our  industrial  system,  have 
no  conception  of  the  gravity  of  the  disease.  They  are  at 
fault  in  their  diagnosis — have  mistaken  a  case  of  buck- 
ague  for  a  'bad  cold.  The  tariff  and  the  currency  prescrip- 
tions were  too  much  like  giving  a  paralytic  bread  pills. 
Commerce  can  adapt  itself  to  almost  any  tariff  conditions 
and  prosper  if  assured  of  their  permanency.  Commerce 
makes  95  per  cent  of  its  exchange  media,  and  could  easily 
and  safely  make  it  all  if  the  politicians  would  but  cease 
their  meretricious  intermeddling.  What  then?  Shall  we 
adopt  the  doctrine  of  laissez  faire  and  let  the  world  drift 
— fall  back  upon  the  physical  law  of  the  survival  of  the 
fittest,  and  class  as  unfit  and  deserving  extermination  all 
those  who  lack  the  necessary  astucity  to  secure  their  own 
just  earnings  and  appropriate  a  portion  of  what  rightfully 
belongs  to  their  equally  industrious  but  less  vulpine  neigh- 
bors ?  Shall  we  accept  the  ip se  dixit  of  Talmage  that  over- 
grown fortunes  are  a  blessing,  because,  forsooth,  their 
owners  scmetimes  build  hospitals  where  we  may  go  when 
poisoned  by  the  mephitic  air  of  Trinity  Church  tenements; 
or  endow  theological  colleges  where  grown  men  are  edu- 


408  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

cated  to  sing-  psalms,  take  up  collections  and  beg  the 
widow's  mite  that  they  may  live  in  luxury  ?  Shall  we  agree 
with  Pope  that  "whatever"  is  is  right,"  no  matter  how 
it  hurts;  or  listen  to  the  Lydian  notes  of  Andrew  Carnegie 
as  he  warbles  a  riant  roundelay  in  praise  of  poverty,  or 
laments  in  pathetic  spondees  the  woes  of  the  man  with 
spondulix  ?  Shall  we  take  refuge  in  religion,  admit  that  the 
multiplication  of  millionaires  and  mendicants  is  a  dispensa- 
tion of  that  Providence  which  "ordereth  all  things  well," 
and  cease  recalcitrating?  That  were  indeed  a  satisfactory 
solution  of  the  problem — so  far  as  the  plutocrats  and  polit- 
ical Czars  are  concerned;  but  will  the  Samsons  of  Labor, 
dimly  conscious  of  his  terrible  strength,  consent  to  accept 
it  and  continue  to  grind  the  Philistinic  corn  of  patience? 
There's  the  rub?  It  was  only  the  hope  of  obtaining  relief 
by  this  or  the  other  catholicon  that  has  kept  himi  quiet  so 
long.  A  man  will  suffer  much  when  Hope  whispers  that 
'tis  not  for  long — that  on  the  morrow  he  will  find  surcease ; 
but  when  his  Star  of  Bethlehem  is  proven  a  wandering 
comet,  or  even  an  ingnis  fatuus  born  of  putrid  brains,  and 
leading  him  deeper  into  the  bog — what  then?  For  years 
the  politico-economic  doctors  have  been  bamboozling  him 
with  the  faith-cure  folly.  When  the  tariff  was  low:  and  times 
hard  they  told  him  that  by  raising  it  they  would  make 
things  right.  It  was  raised,  and  Jordan's  road  became  even 
more  rocky.  They  told  him  that  the  high  tariff  iniquity 
was  playing  Old  Man  of  the  Sea  to  his  industrial  Sinbad — 
that  when  lowered  the  very  mesquite  bushes  would  grow 
baked  apples  and  the  song  of  contentment  be  heard  in  the 
land.  It  was  lowered,  and  forthwith  the  country  was  filled 
with  idle  men,  while  banks  and  business  houses  popped  like 
painted  bladders.  Now  the  tariff  is  to  be  shoved  up  once 
more.  Labor  is  again  preparing  to  enter  an  industrial 
Eden — McKinley  is  a  new  Moses  who  is  to  lead  it  into  a 
land  flowing  with  milk  and  honey,  where  the  cry  of  "hard 
times"  will  be  forever  hushed.  The  same  pitiful  farce  has 
been  played  with  the  currency — gold,  silver  and  green- 
backs have  been  in  turn  the  star  of  all  our  hopes  and  the 
author  of  all  our  ills.  How  long  will  Labor  submit  to  this 
miserable  hocus-pocus  on  the  part  of  politicians  whose 
shibboleth  is  "pie?"  And  when  aweary  of  saltatating  from 
,tweedledum  to  tweedledee  and  back  again;  when  tired 
of  turning  one  wretched  set  of  rascals  out  to  turn  one  even 
more  rapacious  in ;  when  hope  deferred  maketh  the  heart 
sick,  what  will  happen?  \Vill  the  people,  impoverished 
and  broken  in  spirit,  sink  into  abject  slavery,  or  rise  in 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  409 

bloody  rebellion  against  their  bosses?  Until  one  of  these 
two  things  happens ;  until  we  either  become  completely 
Russianized,  or  rally  to  the  standard  of  some  immortal  ass 
like  Coxey,  and,  by  sheer  brute  force  wreck  the  very 
foundations  of  society,  we  will  continue  to  speculate  upon 

the  cause  of  our  industrial  ills  and  seek  a  remedy. 
*         *         * 

We  have  the  most  fruitful  land  upon  which  the  sunlight 
faMs,  the  richest  in  natural  resources.  It  could  support 
six  times  its  present  population  in  comfort — aye,  in  lux- 
ury ;  yet  thousands  of  those  already  here  cannot  wring 
from  the  soil  life's  bare  necessities.  So  much  is  univer- 
sally conceded,  and  we  need  go  no  further  for  demonstra- 
tion that  there's  something  radically  wrong.  What  is  it? 
Let  the  cumulative  wisdom  of  the  country  ansAver.  Tal- 
leyrand has  told  us  that  "Everybody  is  wiser  than  any- 
body,"— a  fact  confirmed  by  the  woeful  failure  of  single- 
handed  industrial  "reformers!"  When  ill  it  is  a  step  to- 
ward recovery  to  learn  what  ails  us.  When  the  industrial 
machine  is  out  of  gear  we  should  ascertain  beyond  the 
peradventure  of  a  doubt  what  put  it  so.  Regarding  the 
"issues"  now  occupying  the  busy  politicians,  there  are  a 
multitude  of  opinions.  An  ounce  of  observation  is  worth 
a  smoke-house  full  of  theory.  We  meet  few  idle  men  who 
can  trace  their  loss  of  employment  to  high  or  low  tariff, 
or  changes  in  the  currency;  but  everywhere  we  meet 
those  who  were  "let  out"  by  the  introduction  of  labor- 
saving  devices.  The  invention  of  typesetting  machines 
flooded  the  land  with  idle  printers,  who  were  accustomed 
to  earn  from  $20  to  $30  a  week  at  the  case.  Few  of  them 
were  fit  for  anything  else.  They  invaded  the  job  and 
country  offices  and  the  fierce  competition  for  employment 
reduced  wages.  During  the  past  decade  a  majority  of 
trades  have  had  a  similar  experience.  Vast  armies  of 
high-priced  workmen  have  been  pauperized,  have  suffered 
a  tremendous  reduction  in  their  purchasing  power.  The 
butcher,  the  baker  and  the  candlestick  maker,  dependent 
upon  the  trade  of  these  men,  reduced  the  number  of  their 
employes,  thus  affecting  in  turn  other  tradesmen.  This 
meant  decreased  consumption,  and  a  decline  in  the  prices 
of  products  of  farm  and  mine  and  factory.  Under  such 
conditions  manufacturers  conspired  to  keep  up  prices  by 
limiting  production,  and,  while  protecting  themselves,  pre- 
cipitate the  ruin  of  others ;  banks  curtail  their  credits,  and 
we  have  an  era  of  hard  times,  entailing  that  lack  of  con- 
fidence which  so  easily  becomes  a  panic.  So  complex  is 


410  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

the  industrial  machine,  so  interdependent  are  all  its  parts, 
that  the  farmer  in  Kansas  and  the  planter  in  Texas  are 
affected  more  or  less  by  a  decrease  in  the  purchasing 
power  of  the  spinners  of  Lowell  or  the  hodcarriers  of  New 
York.  We  are  continually  assured  by  the  spokesmen  for 
the  plutocracy  that  all  is  well ;  that  wages  have  risen 
somewhat  in  the  past  twenty  years  and  the  standard  of 
living  advanced.  What  boots  it  what  the  average  wage- 
rate  may  be  to  the  man  who  cannot  obtain  an  opportunity 
to  earn  his  board?  Wages  have  not  risen,  the  standard 
of  living  has  not  advanced  in  equal  ratio  with  the  work- 
man's ability  to  create  wealth.  That  will  explain  the 
glaring  inequalities  which  exist  in  a  country  of  so-called 
equality.  Nor  is  this  the  worst  phase  of  the  matter:  Be- 
fore the  introduction  of  costly  labor-saving  machines 
every  mechanic  was  practically  his  own  master;  now  he 
is  another's  man,  dependent  upon  his  good  will  for  em- 
ployment at  any  price.  His  independence,  his  sovereignty 
is  gone,  and  he  must  stand,  hat  in  hand,  before  the  indus- 
trial czar  and  humbly  beg  permission  to  produce.  Capital 
is  the  child  of  labor,  but  the  creature  hath  become  lord 
of  its  creator.  It  were  idle  to  decry  labor-saving  appli- 
ances. The  sole  object  of  toil  is  the  production  of  wealth, 
and  whatever  enhances  man's  productive  power  is,  by 
itself  considered,  a  blessing.  The  trouble  is  that  the 
felicity  falls  with  unequal  incidence;  that,  for  the  slight 
addition  to  the  workman's  wage,  he  must  yield  his  free- 
dom— is  transformed  from  a  social  entity  into  a  mere 
factor  in  the  great  industrial  machine,  utterly  useless 
when  out  of  place.  A  mighty  force  has  been  evolved  by 
the  genius  of  man,  which  he  is  not  yet  competent  to 
properly  control.  When  the  car  of  progress  was  pro- 
pelled by  mule  power  'twere  easy  to  keep  pace  with  the 
procession;  but  when  steam  and  electricity  were  applied, 
the  industrial  masses  became  demoralized.  In  other 
words,  the  work-a-day  world  could  not  promptly  adapt 
itself  to  the  new  conditions.  Skilled  mechanics  awoke 
to  find  their  trades  obsolete,  their  chosen  occupation 
gone,  themselves  as  helpless  as  a  watchmaker  among 
savages  or  a  plainsman  in  a  great  city.  As  man's  power 
to  produce  life's  necessaries  is  enhanced,  his  surplus 
energy  expends  itself  in  the  creation  of  luxuries — the 
standard  of  living  advances;  but  this  power  has  multi- 
plied beneath  the  magic  wand  of  genius  faster  than  re- 
adjustment of  forces  were  possible.  Men  cling  desper- 
ately to  their  old  occupations,  and  become  pauperized.  If 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  411 

we  could  pause  awhile  matters  might  adjust  themselves; 
but  the  Car  of  Progress  rolls  ever  faster  and  faster — & 
veritable  Juggernaut  to  millions.  The  division  and  sub- 
division of  labor  goes  ever  on — industrial  conditions 
change  with  the  rapidity  of  the  kaleidoscope.  If,  in  Queen 
Elizabeth's  time,  it  took  nine  tailors  to  make  a  man,  it 
now  requires  a  score  of  workmen  to  make  a  complete 
mechanic.  A  man  must  be  a  specialist,  else  a  vagabond 
— and  to-morrow  his  specialty  may  have  become  a  thing 
of  the  past.  It  is  not  lack  of  available  land,  not  the  "tariff 
atrocities"  or  "the  crime  of  '73"  that  is  reducing  our  erst- 
while independent  working  people  to  the  level  of  serfs 
and  entailing  starvation  in  a  land  of  plenty ;  it  is  the  evil 
inherent  in  change,  the  price  we  are  paying  for  our 
vaunted  Progress;  it  is  the  subjection  of  the  many  to  the 
grasping  few  by  the  inability  of  the  former  to  produce 
independently.  The  aggregate  of  wealth  increases,  but 
is  monopolized  by  those  astute  enough  to  anticipate  these 
industrial  climaxes  and  financially  able  to  take  advan- 
tage thereof.  Yet  we  talk  of  equalizing  advantages  by  a 
change  in  the  tariff  or  currency,  by  the  elevation  of  this 
or  the  other  blatant  ass  to  office?  What  are  we  going 
to  do  about  it?  Why,  we  are  going  to  keep  right  on  con- 
cocting idiotic  political  "issues" — plastering  corns  to  cure 
cramp  colic — until  something  breaks.  That's  what  we 
will  do ;  what  we  should  do  is  a  very  different  matter.  Go 
ask  the  small-bore  attorney  who's  running  for  Congress 
because  he  cannot  obtain  a  paying  practice ;  he  can  tell 
you  exactly  what  to  do  to  be  saved — nay,  will  do  the 
business  for  you  if  you  but  give  him  an  opportunity  to 
draw  $5,000  per  annum  and  clerk  hire  for  distributing 
pumpkin  seeds  and  post-offices.  Just  touch  the  ballot  box 
button  and  he  will  do  the  rest. 

We  know  full  well  that  no  man  ever  honestly  earned  a. 
million  dollars.  The  individual  is  unable  to  create  such 
an  enormous  amount  of  wealth.  If  he  possesses  that  sum 
it  is  plain  that  in  some  way  he  has  managed  to  put  his 
fingers  in  his  neighbor's  pockets.  What  then  must  we 
say  of  those  who  accumulate  fortunes  of  fifty  millions  in 
one  brief  lifetime?  What  of  those  who  inherit  a  talent 
from  ancestors  and,  without  producing  so  much  as  a  shoe 
peg,  transform  it  into  ten?  We  realize  that  the  wealth 
of  this  world  should  belong  to  those  who  produce  it,  not 
to  impudent  idlers.  We  know  that  in  a  country  whose 
wonderful  resources  have  been  scarce  touched  there 
should  be  an  opportunity  for  every  man  able  and  willing 


412  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

to  work.    All  freely  concede  that,  with  his  present  wealth- 
producing  capacity,  the  laborer  should  be  to  a  large  de- 
gree absolved  from  "the  primal  eldest  curse" — be  able  to 
win  a  competence  and  at  the  same  time  have  abundant 
leisure  for  the  improvement  of  his  mind  and  cultivation 
of  the  social  graces.    Thus  far  we  are  all  agreed ;  but  fur- 
ther will  not  consent  to  go  together.     Here  the  broad 
pathway  divides  into  a  multitude  of  tortuous  paths — all 
leading  into  the  same  inane  limboes.       When  we  ask  a 
remedy   for   our   ills   industrial   a   thousand   Cagliostros 
deafen  us  with  their  clamor;  we  pull  in  different  direc- 
tions— fetching  up  finally  at  the  free  soup-house.     If  we 
cannot  as  yet  determine  who  is  in  the  right,  we  may,  by 
a  little  ratiocination,  decide  who  is  in  the  wrong,  and  that 
were  no  inconsiderable  gain.     Next  in  value  to  knowing 
how  to  do  a  thing  is  knowing  how  not  to  do  it.     Reason 
should  advise  us  that  a  worse  enemy  to  labor  and  society 
at  large  than  even  the  most  grasping  plutocrat  is  the 
damphool  empiric  who  would  reconstruct  our  entire  in- 
dustrial system  in  a  day.    Experience  has  taught  us  that 
revolutions  do  not  go  backward — that  the  old-world  days 
of  communism  and  public  ownership  of  land  are  forever 
dead ;  that  attempts  to  revive  customs  once  generally  dis- 
carded can  meet  with  no  permanent  success.     Common- 
sense  proclaims  that  government  cannot  enrich  us;  that 
it  is  our  dependent,  not  our  patron — that  it  can  only  ad- 
vance the  fortune  of  one  at  the  expense  of  all.    We  know 
from  observation  that  it  matters  little  what  political  party 
is  in  power — that  each  has  its  complement  of  patriots  and 
place-warmers,  philosophers  and  fools.    The  problem  be- 
fore us  is  the  combination  of  the  productive  power  of  the 
new  industrial  system  with  the  individual  independence 
and  just  distribution  of  the  old — to  secure  to  each  the  full 
usufruct  af  his  labor  under  conditions  consistent  with  the 
most  advantageous  application  of  physical  energy.     It  is 
not  an  easy  problem — not  one  that  can  be  solved  off-hand 
by  a  congeries  of  noisy  demagogues  and  ward-heelers 
calling  itself  a  national  convention  and  prating  idly  of 
economic  principles;  yet  in  its  solution  lies  our  salvation. 
It  is  the  riddle  propounded  to  us  by  the  sphinx  of  Time, 
which  not  to  read  is  to  be  destroyed;  yet  no   CEdipus 
makes  answer.    Until  there  is  some  adjustment  on  com- 
mon-sense lines  conditions  will  go  from  bad  to  worse, 
for  the  simple  reason  that  it  is  cheaper  to  produce  on  a 
large  than  on  a  small  scale.     Our  large  manufactories  are 
absorbing  or  destroying  the  lesser ;  the  great  mercantile 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  413 

establishments  are  crushing  out  the  small  tradesmen — 
agriculture  is  tending  to  the  colossal.  This  is  inevitable, 
is  the  very  breath  in  the  nostrils  of  Progress;  but  it  ren- 
ders Dives  more  powerful  and  Lazarus  the  more  depend- 
ent. Like  Doedalus,  we  have  soared  so  near  the  sun  that 
the  wax  has  melted  on  our  wings.  How  to  continue  our 
flight  and  avoid  a  catastrophe  is  the  problem  of  prob- 
lems. Perchance  next  month  I  will  offer,  not  a  heaven- 
inspired  panacea,  but  simply  a  few  suggestions — if  I  can 
persuade  myself  that  mediocrity  may  make  itself  heard 
amid  the  megalophanous  bawling  of  so  many  who  know 
it  all.  We  must  remember,  however,  that  the  united  ef- 
forts of  Solon,  Lycurgus  and  Sam  Jones  were  incapable 
of  dragging  the  millennium  in  by  the  ears.  McKinley 
may  give  us  an  "age  of  gold/'  but  scarce  a  Saturnian 
epocha.  The  wisest  economic  coryphei  are  powerless  to 
banish  poverty  and  want  from  the  world.  Just  so  long 
as  men  are  born  unequal  in  body,  mind  and  ambition ; 
just  so  long  as  commerce  and  industry  exist  upon  the 
earth,  the  palace  will  proudly  rear  its  fluted  columns 
while  Hunger  shivers  in  the  lowly  cot.  The  capable  and 
provident  will  succeed,  while  the  incapable  and  wasteful 
go  to  the  wall — and  this  despite  all  panaceas  of  the  poli- 
ticians. We  must  remember  that  any  system  which  with- 
holds from  genius  and  industry  their  just  reward  and 
bestows  it  upon  folly  and  sloth,  or  makes  the  people  the 
wards  of  the  State — transfers  them  from  an  industrial  to 
a  political  czar — were  infinitely  worse  than  the  one  under 
which  we  live ;  that  when  we  have  given  to  all  equal  op- 
portunities and  assured  the  full  usufruct  of  their  endeavor 
we  have  discharged  our  full  duty  to  society  and  our- 
selves. Put  all  American  citizens  on  an  industrial  parity, 
then  let  them  work  out  their  own  salvation.  That's  the 
idea. 


AN  OLD  MAIDS'  AUCTION. 

No  more  will  precocious  infants  convulse  their  auditors 
at  school  exhibitions  by  lisping  that  almost  painfully  hu- 
morous "piece"  entitled,  The  Bachelor's  Auction.  No  more 
will  they  stand  before  us  in  all  their  uncomfortable  cleanli- 
ness and  astound  fond  parents  and  admiring  friends  by  dron- 
ing forth, 

"Here's  an  old  bachelor,  who  wants  to  buy? 

A  hundred  old  maids  make  answer,  'I/  'I!' 
And  all  the  old  maids,  some  younger,  some  older, 
Each  lugged  an  old  bachelor  home  on  her  shoulder." 


414  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

The  times  change,  and  we  change  with  them.  I  have 
before  me  a  scorched  banana  hand-bill  advertising  an  ''Auc- 
tion of  Old  Maids,"  under  the  highly  respectable  auspices 
of  the  Ladies'  Aid  Society  of  the  Christian  Church,  Lam- 
pasas,  Texas.  From  this  remarkable  flyer  I  copy  the  fol- 
lowing : 

"No  bids  entertained  for  less  than  25  cents  nor  more 
than  50  cents.  Each  purchaser  of  an  old  maid  is  entitled 
to  two  saucers  of  ice  cream.  Now  is  your  chance !"  I 
should  suggest !  A  nice,  kittenish  old  maid  at  two  to  four 
bits,  according  to  the  bidding,  and  a  brace  of  iron-stone 
china  saucers  of  the  best  home-brewed  ice  cream  thrown 
in  as  lagniappe!  Why  didn't  the  Ladies'  Aid  Society  ad- 
vise me  before  it  was  everlastingly  too  late  ? — I  would  have 
taken  the  entire  lot.  Lapped  in  the  oleiferous  luxury  of 
country  cream,  and  surrounded  by  devoted  damosels  whose 
charm,  like  wine,  has  improved  with  age,  I  would  find 
life  well  worth  the  living — would  plead  with  the  fleeting 
moment  in  the  words  of  Faust,  "Stay,  thou  art  so  fair!" 
Or  I  could  have  colonized  my  fair  Florimels  in  female  suf- 
frage Kansas  and  re-sold  'em  to  Mark  Hanna  at  a  profit  of 
300  per  cent.  Ah  me!  there  be  "tides  in  the  affairs  of 
men,  which,  taken  at  the  flood,  lead  on  to  fortune;"  but 
ever  does  the  Argos  sail  for  the  Golden  Fleece  ere  I  can  gel 
afloat.  One  does  not  have  an  opportunity  every  day  to 
serve  the  Lord  by  wallowing  in  the  fragrance  of  faded 
flowers,  contemplating  ancient  paintings  and  absorbing 
sweetened  frost.  If  the  Ladies'  Aid  Society  has  any  more 
old  maids  left,  whom  they  can  recommend  as  suitable  com- 
panions for  a  middle-aged  but  uxorious  Baptist  minister, 
they  may  ship,  C.  O.  D.,  a  dozen  or  so,  assorted.  'S'matter 
with  Lampasas  as  an  old  maids'  market,  that  they  are  sold 
for  a  song  and  mock-birds  supplied  to  sing  it?  Has  the 
boom  collapsed,  or  is  the  town  overrun  by  enterprising 
widows  who  crowd  their  inexperienced  sisters  to  the  wall? 
Think  of  a  woman,  whose  charms  have  grown  mellow 
'neath  two  score  summer  suns,  standing  on  the  auction 
block  "in  maiden  meditation  fancy  free"  and  peering  from 
behind  her  fan  into  the  upturned  faces  of  creation's  al- 
leged lords,  while  a  stentor-lunged  salesman  offers  her  for 
the  price  of  an  aitch-bone  or  boarding  house  hen !  Im- 
agine the  unfeeling  huckster  of  a  virgin  heart  dilating  upon 
an  ice  cream  dower — and  all  for  a  quarter-of-a-dollar.  O 
manhood,  where  is  thy  blush !  O  chivalry,  where  thy  shame  ! 
A  toothless  picaninny — of  the  Waco  Baptist  breed — would 
have  brought  more  in  ante-bellum  times,  What  disposi- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  415 

tion  the  reckless  purchasers  made  of  their  property  I  am  not 
advised.  Had  the  sale  occurred  in  Constantinople  the  an- 
swer were  easy;  but  the  purchases  may  have  been  made 
in  Lampasas  solely  on  account  of  the  cream.  Selling  ladies 
at  auction  in  the  name  of  the  Lord  is  not  a  custom  peculiar 
to  Lampasas.  Last  April;  the  Epworth  Leaguers,  at  Suf- 
fern,  N.  Y.,  disposed  of  a  number  of  females  at  public  out- 
cry to  the  highest  bidder,  and,  to  fire  the  callow  heart  of 
youth  into  religious  fervor,  hit  upon  the  happy  expedient 
of  concealing  their  faces  and  allowing  prospective  pur- 
chasers to  examine  their  legs.  Whether  the  Ladies'  Aid 
Society  of  Lampasas  profited  by  this  plan,  I  have  not  learned. 
If  they  did  not,  they  are  by  no  means  up  to  date — it  being 
so  much  easier  to  round  out  with  sawdust  the  "hose  a 
world  too  large  for  the  shrunk  shank,"  than  to  recall  the 
lilies  and  roses  of  auld  lang  syne.  The  fact,  however, 
that  small  bids  were  cheerfully  received  and  large  ones  not 
expected — that  the  sacred  game  was  played  with  a  two-bit 
ante  and  50  cent  limit — argues  that  they  entered  a  caveat 
cmptor  by  recklessly  exposing  the  faces  of  those  brought  to 
the  block.  That  is  some  consolation;  still,  the  Iconoclast, 
as  court  of  last  resort  in  matters  religious — the  Phillipe 
de  Mornay  of  Protestantism — cannot  sanction  the  sale  of 
maids  of  whatsoever  age  at  auction — no  matter  what  portion 
of  their  anatomy  be  submitted  for  public  inspection.  It  has 
granted  indulgences  to  a  few  churches,  in  sore  financial  dis- 
tress, to  sell  kisses  to  the  public  at  a  fixed  price,  but  it  must 
place  sacred  leg-shows  under  the  ban,  even  where  the  pet- 
ticoat reaches  as  low  as  the  knee,  the  high-water  mark  of 
the  Epworth  Leaguers.  It  must  anathematize  the  sale  of 
old  maids,  as  too  suggestive  of  the  devil's  auctions  held  in 
days  agone  in  Chicago's  variety  dives.  It  feels  constrained 
to  admonish  the  Epworth  Leaguers  and  Ladies'  Aid  So- 
cieties that  infraction  of  this  interdict  will  result  in  excom- 
munication. Ministers  finding  their  parishioners  actuated 
by  abnormal  zeal  untempered  with  judgment,  will  read  this 
rescript  from  their  pulpits  for  three  consecutive  Sundays. 
The  Iconoclast  humbly  hopes  that  no  irreparable  injury  has 
yet  been  wrought  to  morality  by  those  whose  religious  ardor 
has  caused  them  to  ignore  social  ordinances  and  indulge  in 
aesthetic  heresies — who  have  embraced  the  dangerous  doc- 
trine that  the  end — or  even  both  ends — justifies  the  means ; 
but  it  must  consider  the  future  and  estimate  the  evils  that 
are  likely  to  flow  from  this  growing  tendency  on  the  part 
of  the  church  to  compete  with  the  devil  in  this  particular 
province.  Having  once  resorted  to  money-raising  expedients 


416  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

which  render  religion  ridiculous,  if  not  disreputable ;  having 
begun  with  grab-bags,  raffles,  cake-rings  and  other  cut- 
throat gambling  devices,  and  already  gotten  so  far  as  the 
sacred  kissing  bee  and  sanctified  leg  show,  where  would 
misguided  zeal  lead  these  gnat-straining,  camel-swallowers 
did  not  the  Iconoclast  blast  with  its  anathema  this  evil  in 
the  bud?  As  man  became  sated  with  one  appeal  to  his 
animalism  they  would  have  to  resort  to  others  even  more 
risque  to  tempt  his  jaded  appetite,  until  even  the  obscene 
orgies  of  ancient  phallic  worship  were  revived,  and  Sam 
Jones'  open-sewer  sermons  and  Sid  Williams'  guano  meta- 
phors considered  affectedly  euphemistic.  Because  the  devil 
fishes  for  saints  with  an  old  sun-bonnet,  we  are  not  privi- 
leged to  bait  our  hook  with  fancy  hosiery  in  a  frantic  at- 
tempt to  land  a  few  sinners.  Aside  from  questions  of  pro- 
priety, appeals  to  pruriency  by  the  goldly  seldom  pay.  Sell- 
ing kisses — in  the  name  of  Christ — no  longer  appeals  to 
this  aesthetic  people.  It  has  learned  by  experience  that  a 
kiss  snatched  in  public  from  lips  defiled  with  the  saliva  of 
beery  bums  and  "terbacker  chawin"  deacons,  does  not  create 
the  ecstatic  deliration  of  the  "lingering  sweetness  long  drawn 
out"  when  you  have  a  monopoly  of  the  business  beneath 
a  harvest  moon — does  not  make  the  blood  to  dance  and  the 
soul  to  swoon  like  a  yum-yum  snap  behind  the  parlor  door. 
Even  the  reflection  that  you  are  doing  your  Christian  duty 
does  not  sweeten  the  disagreeable  dose.  Besides,  the  doc- 
tors of  medicine  have  decided  that  a  young  woman's  buss- 
ing machine  should  be  carefully  deodorized  every  time  she 
changes  fellows,  to  discourage  mumps,  measles  and  cholera- 
morbus  bacteria.  When  I  absorb  my  two-bits'  worth  of 
sanctified  honey-dew  I  examine  the  front  elevation  of  the 
sacrificial  virgin  for  a  spot  where  the  drug-store  bloom 
retains  its  pristine  brightness.  If  it  has  been  all  swiped  off 
by  enthusiastic  elders,  I  draw  her  head  tenderly  but  firmly 
down  until  her  sunny  bangs  nestle  on  my  heaving  brisket, 
plant  my  apostolic  imprint  on  the  back  of  her  snowy  neck 
and  make  a  break  for  the  open  air,  thanking  the  Lord  at 
every  leap  that  I  have  both  saved  my  soul  and  preserved 
my  life.  The  sacred  leg-show  is  likewise  becoming  stale, 
flat  and  pecuniarily  unprofitable  since  the  advent  of  bikes  and 
bloomers.  When  one  can  get  a  surfeit  of  all  kinds,  classes 
and  conditions  of  legs  by  simply  lingering  on  the  corner, 
he  will  not — unless  he  be  a  holiness  camp-meeting  neophyte 
— cough  up  much  cash  for  the  privilege  of  gazing  at  a  lot  of 
splay  feet  that  would  frighten  the  Salvation  Army,  a  con- 
geries of  misshapen  bandy-shanks  that  would  give  a  staere- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  417 

manager  the  nightmare  and  drive  a  poet  to  drink.  An  old 
maids'  auction — even  with  two  plates  of  cream  added  to 
every  chromo — is  not  calculated  to  make  the  average  man 
empty  his  pockets  into  the  coffers  of  Israel.  Of  course  the 
godly  might  resort  to  bust  exhibitions  and  bare-back  auc- 
tions; but  they  would  encounter  disastrous  competition  in 
the  popular  bathing  resorts  and  fashionable  ball-rooms. 
What  else  have  they  to  offer  in  their  attempt  to  beat  the 
devil  at  his  own  game — to  make  the  church  as  attractive 
to  worldlings  as  a  Five  Points'  variety  dive? 


"THE  WEDDING  OF  THE  SEASON." 

It  occurred  in  St.  Louis,  August  12,  at  exactly  5  o'clock, 
p.  m.;  at  least  it  was  advertised — several  thousand  dollars' 
worth — to  take  place  at  that  time,  and  we  may  presume 
that  it  was  successfully  pulled  off,  as  there  was  no  apparent 
reason  for  police  interference.  The  Republic  gave  it  a  full- 
page  "spread" — evidently  via  the  business  office — as  ad- 
vance notice,  and  said  absolutely  nothing  about  it  on  the 
day  following  the  nuptial  date.  Having  put  up  so  hand- 
somely for  advance  advertising,  "the  high  contracting  par- 
ties" doubtless  supposed  they  would  be  given  at  least  a  col- 
umn puff  after  the  agony  was  over,  but  were  doomed  to 
disappointment.  But  if  the  Republic  failed  to  throw  in  any 
post-nuptial  lagniappe,  it  at  least  did  its  contract  work  well 
—  made  its  write-up  of  this  conspiracy  against  single  bless- 
edness as  interesting  as  any  laundry  soap  epic  or  soasyou- 
dont  romaunt  I  have  yet  seen.  It  led  off  with  a  half-tone 
pine-board  portrait  of  the  loving  pair  holding  up  a  rustic 
fence  and  spooning  with  the  unconstrained  enthusiasm  of 
'Arry  and  'is  'Arriet.  The  bride-elect  is  gazing  out  into  the 
gloom  with  a  whither-am-I-drifting  expression,  while  her 
fiance  peers  into  her  face  with  the  hungry  look  of  a  Weary 
Waggles  regarding  a  hot  wienerwurst.  Next  on  the  page 
we  have  a  full-length  portrait  of  the  woman  in  the  case 
as  she  appears  when  about  to  have  her  photograph  taken, 
while  to  her  right  is  a  jackknife  sketch  of  her  fellow  suf- 
ferer, apparently  wondering  whether  he  had  best  do  the 
deed  or  take  to  the  woods.  Sandwiched  in  among  fac- 
similes of  wedding  cards,  gorgeous  gowns  and  music  "con>- 
posed  for  the  memorable  event,"  are  several  columns  of 
information  concerninig  the  people  whose  agreement  to 
occupy  the  same  sheets  is  supposed  to  be  of  international 


418  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

importance.  They  are  a  Miss  Marie  Garesche,  daughter  of 
William  A.  Garesche,  a  St.  Louis  attorney  of  whom  I  had 
not  hitherto  heard,  and  a  certain  young  man  who  enhances 
his  personal  pulchritude  by  putting  his  moustache  up  on 
curl  papers,  preserves  his  mental  equipoise  by  parting  his 
hair  at  the  equator,  and  is  growing  somewhat  bowlegged 
beneath  the  ponderous  title  of  Count  Vincent  des  Rioux 
de  Messimy.  He  clerks  in  the  St.  Louis  branch  of  a  New 
York  jobbing  concern  and  is  known  to  his  intimes  as 
"Messy."  The  Republic  describes  him  as  "a  handsome 
gentleman  with  the  most  engaging  manners;"  but  an  "ad 
man"  with  a  fat  contract  to  fill,  always  sidetracks  his  con- 
science. The  portrait  of  this  prize  beaut  suggests  a  French 
barber  struggling  with  the  glad  surprise  of  a  ten-cent  tip. 
His  affianced  is  described  as  ''a  dainty  creature,  petite  in 
stature,  a  blonde  of  the  purest  type,  with  large  blue-gray 
eyes  and  delicately  chiseled  features;"  but  the  artist  makes 
a  vigorous  minority  report.  The  portrait — which  I  sin- 
cerely hope  does  Miss  Garesche  rank  injustice — makes  her 
dish-faced  as  a  new  moon,  with  nose  like  a  seed-wart,  weak 
mouth,  soup-ladle  chin  and  a  smirk  calculated  to  frighten 
anything  but  a  French  count  sorely  in  need  of  cash.  Mis- 
takes will  happen,  and  it  is  possible  that  in  the  rush  and 
hurry  incident  to  the  occasion  Papa  Garesche  gave  the 
Republic's  "ad  man"  photos  of  Marie's  Norwegian  maid 
and  seme  becurled  bargain-counter  "mash;"  or,  in  making 
up  the  forms,  the  foreman  may  have  transposed  the  por- 
traits of  the  happy  pair  and  those  intended  for  the  freak 
page. 

The  pedigree  of  the  young  lady  is  given  from  prehistoric 
times,  and  from  it  we  gather  that  she,  too,  is  of  blooded 
stock — that  "from  a  long  and  noble  ancestry,  and  success- 
ive infusions  of  the  bluest  blood,"  has  sprung  this  fairest 
of  the  flowers.  "The  Garesche  family  traces  its  origin  to 
the  early  epochs  of  the  primitive  Celts  of  druidical  mem- 
ory!" just  how  it  manages  all  this,  doesn't  particularly 
rratter;  but  it  is  evident  that  its  genealogical  tree  is  a  verit- 
able Ygdrasyl,  and  probably  antedates  Adam  by  several 
centuries.  Carlyle  has  given  us  a  pen-picture  of  "the  early 
epochs  of  the  primitive  Celts,"  in  his  Sartor  Resartus — 
refers  to  Col.  Garesche's  distinguished  ancestors  as  a  "sav- 
age, glaring  fiercely  from  under  his  fleece  of  hair,  which 
with  the  beard  reached  down  to  his  loins,  and  hung  round 
him  like  a  matted  cloak ;  the  rest  of  his  body  sheeted  in  its 
natural  fell — a  flint-hurling,  aboriginal  anthropophagus!" 
But  the  Garesches  progressed  gradually  from  the  primitive 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  419 

to  the  polite.  In  the  course  of  some  ages  they  acquired 
the  gentle  art  of  weaving  and  wearing  breechclouts,  and 
eventually  became  "members  of  the  Huguenot  nobility  of 
France." 

It  is  important  to  note  that  "Jean  Garesche,  great-grand- 
uncle  of  the  bride's  grandfather,  died  at  Nieul  in  1754." 
Poor  old  man!  He  didn't  have  a  title,  but  he  may  have 
had  a  tape  worm  or  a  wren.  Anyhow,  he's  dead — died  be- 
fore witnessing  the  crowning  glory  of  the  Garesche  family, 
the  purchase  of  a  whole  page  of  slop  in  the  St.  Louis 
Republic.  Ah  me!  In  the  midst  of  life  we  are  in  death, 
and  no  man  knoweth  what  kind  of  chronic  jackassi  his 
great  grand-nephew  will  vbeget.  A  grand  something-or- 
other  of  Col.  Garesche  is  listed  as  "taking  an  active  part 
against  the  oppressive  decrees  of  the  revolutionary  pow- 
ers." They  appear  to  have  been  very  active  indeed.  He 
fled  from  San  Domingo  to  France  to  save  his  life,  and  when 
the  revolutionists  there  began  to  shoot  recklessly  he 
skipped  over  to  the  United  States.  The  French  royalists 
were  at  that  time  great  skippers,  and  close  in  their  foam- 
ing wake  was  usually  to  be  found  the  patriot  tri-color  of 
France  and  a  Tillmanic  pitchfork.  Vital  Marie  Garesche, 
grand-father  of  William  A.,  was  given  a  petty  job  in  the 
government  land  office  and  assigned  to  St.  Louis.  He  ap- 
pears to  have  laid  the  foundation  of  the  family  fortune  by 
filing  a  homestead  claim  on  what  is  now  a  portion  of  the  city. 
In  the  course  of  time  he  was  elected  to  the  city  council — 
and  the  rest  was  dead  easy.  He  found  time,  however, 
despite  his  onerous  aldermanic  duties  in  the  then  insig- 
nificant city,  to  beget  sons  and  daughters.  One  of  these 
sons,  of  whom  we  hear  little  in  the  biographical  sketch, 
begat  "William  A.  Garesche,  the  lovely  girl's  father,  who 
will  give  her  in  marriage  to  a  nobleman  of  equally  proud 
lineage!"  (Will  somebody  please  'phone  to  the  Southern 
Hotel  bar  to  send  over  a  Joe  Rickey  cocktail,  with  seltzer 
on  the  side?  Thanks!)  How  nice — the  marriage,  I  mean. 
Col.  Garesche  is  a  forty-second  cousin  to  various  titled 
Frenchmen  who  cannot  at  present  realize  on  their  patents  of 
nobility,  Gallic  coats-of-arms  being  quoted  on  the  Bourse  as 
on  a  par  with  Confederate  bonds.  Just  what  the  down- 
trodden French  noblemen  are  doing  to  earn  a  living  while 
the  republic  laughs  at  their  pretended  rights  of  robbery,  the 
biographer  of  the  Garesche  family  does  not  inform  us. 
But  we  need  not  borrow  trouble — genuine  French  noble- 
men can  always  find  employment.  They  make  the  best  of 
barbers,  the  most  obsequious  of  waiters,  while  as  cooks 


420  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

they  defy  competition.  They  possess  a  native  delicacy  of 
touch,  a  refinement  of  feeling,  and  an  appreciation  of  the 
eternal  verities  of  art  that  render  them  incomparable  in 
the  depilation  of  a  tender  face  or  the  manipulation  of  a 
souffle.  Take  away  our  French  counts  and  Italian  princes 
and  the  American  sybarite  would  suffer. 

A  few  commonplace  Morrisons  and  plebeian  Browns  have 
managed  to  intermingle  their  proletarian  blood  with  the 
divine  ichor  which  pulses  in  the  veins  of  Miss  Garesche; 
but  as  "pa"  has  boodle  to  throw  at  the  birds,  this  misfor- 
tune may  be  forgiven,  if  not  forgotten.  Not  much  is  said 
about  the  bridegroom's  pedigree;  but  we  are  led  to  infer 
that,  tucked  away  in  some  cosy  corner  of  la  Belle  France, 
his  "ancestral  castle,"  rears  its  proud  battlements.  He 
couldn't  be  expected  to  bring  both  his  title  and  his  castle 
to  this  country — it  might  disturb  the  world's  equilibrium. 
The  "ad  man"  of  the  Republic — who  is  something  of  an 
artist  at  "slinging  the  soup" — manages  to  weave  a  very 
pretty  romance  around  this  blue-blooded  Venus  and 
Adonis,  whose  union  constitutes  "the  wedding  of  the  sea- 
son"— makes  even  the  hymenic  torch  that  welded  the  Marl- 
borough  title  to  the  Vanderbilt  millions,  and  the  costly 
pyrotechnics  of  Count  Castellane,  pale  their  ineffectual 
fires.  It  appears  that  about  a  decade  ago,  when  Miss 
Garesche  was — by  her  own  arithmetic — of  almost  mar- 
riageable age,  her  father  occupied  a  government  position 
in  keeping  with  the  dignity  of  a  man  who  traces  this  "proud 
lineage"  back  to  an  unbroken  line  through  Huguenot  nobles 
to  the  "primitive  Celts."  He  was  United  States  consul  to 
Martinique,  a  West  India  island — fully  equal  in  area  and 
importance  to  that  of  which  the  city  council  of  Galveston 
once  appointed  "Sandy"  Musgrove  governor.  It  is  well 
nigh  as  large  as  a  South  Texas  melon  patch,  and  an  equal 
number  of  niggers  may  be  found  in  it  on  any  moonlight 
night.  His  duties  consisted  in  displaying  the  American 
flag  on  July  Fourth  and  Washington's  birthday,  drawing 
his  salary  and  taking  his  siestas.  Count  Vincent  des  Rioux 
de,  etc.,  had  some  relatives  perched  on  that  insignificant 
knob,  which,  for  some  reason,  protrudes  itself  out  of  the 
waters  of  the  neo-tropics,  and  while  swinging  around  in 
search  of  a  situation,  he  placed  them  under  tribute  for  a 
few  days'  fodder.  He  couldn't  very  well  turn  around  to 
spit  in  the  narrow  confines  of  Martinique  without  meeting 
the  American  consul.  They  were  kindred  spirits — one  the 
calyx,  the  other  the  corolla  of  the  fragrant  genealogical 
flower.  They  compared  their  "proud  lineages"  and  found 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  421 

them  to  be  on  a  parity.  The  bogus  count  called  on  the 
opera-bouffe  consul.  There  "he  saw  a  fairy  child  with 
large  blue  eyes  and  a  bewitchingly  tender  mouth.  The  chit 
of  a  girl  (about  14)  said,  'How  do  you  do?'  and  "Good 
afternoon,'  with  inimitable  grace."  After  a  careful  study 
of  what  the  Republic  calls  her  portrait,  I  am  surprised  that 
she  didn't  add  that  Polly  wanted  a  cracker;  but  perhaps 
we  should  not  expect  abnormal  precocity  of  children  han- 
dicapped with  noble  pedigrees.  Her  "How  do  you  do," 
seems,  however,  to  have  knocked  the  impressionable  count 
clear  off  the  Christmas  tree,  for  we  are  assured  that  "when- 
ever the  young  man  put  aside  the  stern  realities  of  life  he 
closed  his  eyes  and  dreamed  of  the  little  girl  in  the  far- 
away West  Indies."  In  other  words,  when  the  shop  was 
closed  for  the  day,  the  blinds  drawn  down,  the  cuspidore 
cleaned,  the  sawdust  swept  up  and  his  lingering  eternity 
of  a  title  carefully  polished  joint  by  joint  and  stood  up  in 
the  corner,  his  wits  would  go  a  wool-gathering  and  won- 
der how  much  "dust"  old  man  Garesche  had  got.  A  new 
president  was  elected,  "the  rascals  were  turned  out" — as 
usual — and  William  A.  Garesche,  with  the  public  udder 
remorselessly  pulled  out  of  him,,  returned  to  St.  Louis  and 
resumed  the  burdens  of  life.  Six  years  later  Count  Vincent 
des,  etc.,  also  drifted  to  the  Cyclone  City.  He  once  more 
heard  the  magic  name  of  Garesche,  and — probably  think- 
ing he  might  be  invited  to  stay  to  dinner — put  in  an  ap- 
pearance. The  girl  had  forgotten  him  in  the  effort  to  add 
a  few  more  phrases  to  her  vocabulary.  Finding  the  old  man 
to  be  financially  well  fixed,  Messimy  laid  siege  to  the  heart 
of  Miss  Marie,  and  after  three  long  years  of  importunity 
the  belle  of  many  seasons  surrendered.  How  glad  we 
should  all  be  that  the  St.  Louis  breed  is  to  be  improved, 
that  the  "blue  blood"  of  the  Garesches,  traced  to  the  primi- 
tive anthropophagi,  will  not  be  further  corrupted  by  admix- 
ture with  that  of  plebeian  Browns,  but  brought  back  by 
easy  stages  to  that  pristine  purity  when  every  daughter  of 
the  distinguished  house  was  sired  by  a  "primitive  Celt" 
and  dammed  by  dame  of  high  degree!  Happy  Garesches! 
Ecstatic  Messimy  of  the  vestibule  train  title!  How  pretty 
it  is  to  see  William  A. — whose  grandfather's  great-uncle 
departed  this  life  in  1754 — throwing  bouquets  at  the  no- 
bility of  both  families,  bouquets  that  cost  several  hundred 
dollars  a  bunch.  And  what  a  concession  to  hoi  polloi  to 
be  taken  into  Miss  Garesche's  confidence  and  told  with 
what  kind  of  lingerie  she  will  adorn  her  sacred  person 
while  filling  the  count's  cup  of  felicity  to  overflowing! 


422  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

I'm  not  finding  fault — heaven  forfend!  The  ex-consul 
to  the  mighty  empire  of  Martinique  has  a  perfect  right  to 
''blow  hisself"  for  page  newspaper  puffs — to  exhibit  his 
genealogical  tree  in  Shaw's  Garden  if  he  likes;  while  it  is 
the  prerogative  of  the  Republic  to  trade  nux  vomica  drule 
and  Delia  Cruscan  drivel  for  good  American  dollars.  Still, 
I  cannot  imagine  the  great  American  public  filing  a  protest 
had  Count  Vincent  des,  etc.,  and  his  cerulean  blooded 
Baby  Mine  slipped  out  to  Carondolet,  or  over  to  East  St. 
Louis  while  no  one  was  looking,  got  hitched  by  a  justice 
of  the  peace,  regaled  a  few  friends  with  keg  beer  and 
pretzels,  then  started  blithely  in  to  take  the  conceit  out  of 
the  census  enumerators  of  Chicago  and  perpetuate  the 
noble  name  of  de  Messimy,  instead  of  halting  the  political 
torch-light  parade  to  vaunt  their  "purty"  and  proclaim  that 
they  were  about  to  accept  St.  Paul's  sage  advice  to  couples 
similarly  situated.  I  have  no  word  of  criticism  for  Miss 
Garesche;  she  is  a  young  thing,  somewhat  under  thirty; 
but  William  A.  and  the  gentleman  with  the  serial  story 
title  are  old  enough  to  know  better. 

It  is  a  trifle  strange  that  no  attempt  was  made  to  trace 
"the  proud  lineage"  of  either  bride  or  groom  back  to  an 
aristocracy  of  intellect,  a  nobility  of  brains — that  their  pride 
should  center  in  a  supposed  descent  from  various  mental 
vacuums  who  were  "stuck  o'er  with  titles  and  hung  round 
with  strings." 

They  exalt  their  horn,  not  because  their  families  have 
produced  men  who  won  and  wore  the  amaranthine  wreath ; 
but  because  their  ancestors  were  unimportant  factors  of  that 
ignoble  French  "nobility"  whose  transcendent  impudence, 
disgusting  debaucheries  and  wolfish  exactions  drove  a  patient 
and  long-suffering  people  to  a  revolt  whose  attendant  hor- 
rors constitute  the  darkest  page  in  human  history.  France, 
like  the  United  States,  has  abolished  patents  of  nobility, 
and  for  the  self-same-reason — because  they  are  badges  of 
servility,  and  in  a  republic  every  citizen  should  be  a  sov- 
ereign. Imagine  Americans,  who  have  learned  senators  for 
servants,  and  who  make  and  unmake  the  chief  magistrates 
of  the  greatest  nation  that  ever  sunned  itself  in  the  smile 
of  omnipotent  God,  boasting  that  their  ancestors  had  to 
take  orders  from  some  petty  princeling  ruled  by  a  prosti- 
tute! There  was  never  but  one  real  nobility  on  this  earth 
and  its  acknowledged  head  was  born  in  a  hovel.  No  pom- 
pous monarch  that  ever  wielded  a  sceptre  was  worthy  to  sit 
in  the  presence  of  Shakespeare.  The  proudest  nobleman 
who  followed  the  fortunes  of  Charlemagne,  or  danced  and 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  423 

grimaced  in  the  corrupt  court  of  le  Grande  Monarque  would 
have  been  honored  by  a  careless  nod  from  Miguel  Cervantes 
or  a  kick  from  Bobby  Burns.  All  the  Orleanists  of  France 
could  not  have  furnished  forth  the  brains  of  the  boorish 
Corsican.  No  "prince  of  the  blood,"  since  Trajan's  pillar 
first  marked  the  center  of  the  world,  was  the  peer  of  Abra- 
ham Lincoln. 

Messrs.  Garesche  and  Messimy  should  get  "the  pomp  of 
heraldry"  out  of  their  foolish  heads.  Few  Americans  can 
trace  their  lineage  back  more  than  a  century  or  so  without 
finding  some  petty  lordling  or  ticky-tailed  princeling  figur- 
ing as  a  member  of  the  family ;  but  we  are  striving  desper- 
ately to  live  down  the  disgrace.  We  are  trying  to  breed  out 
the  syphilitic  "blue  blood"  and  fill  the  veins  of  this  nation  of 
sovereigns  with  a  healthy  crimson  tide,  thereby  insuring 
beautiful  and  noble  women,  and  men  too  manly  to  make 
themselves  ridiculous  by  boasting  that  their  ancestors  were 
a  set  of  impudent  thieves  living  upon  the  honest  earnings 
of  others.  We  aspire  to  membership  in  an  aristocracy 
founded,  not  upon  the  bones  of  a  French  king's  upper- 
servants,  but  on  the  honest  worth  of  noble  men  and  women. 
If  the  Garesches  and  Messimys  think  there  is,  was,  or  can 
ever  be  a  prouder  title  than  American  sovereignty,  a  nobler 
lineage  than  descent  from  brave  and  brainy  men  and  chaste 
and  beautiful  women,  why  did  they  drag  their  empty  bellies 
hither?  Let  them  be  sent  back  across  the  sea,  as  unworthy 
to  live  one  hour  where  falls  the  sacred  shadow  of  Free- 
dom's flag. 


LOVE  AS  AN  INTOXICANT. 

Seymour,  Texas,  Nov.  4,  1897. 

Mr.  Brann :  Will  you  please  answer  the  following  question  and 
thereby  settle  a  dispute  in  Seymour:  Is  love  intoxicating? 

CHAS.  E.  RUPE. 

My  correspondent  neglects  to  state  whether  Seymour  is  a 
Prohibition  town.  Of  course  if  it  is  and  love  is  listed  as  an 
intoxicant,  the  blind  god  will  be  expatriated  for  the  benefit 
of  the  makers  of  Peruna,  Hostetter's  Bitters  and  other  pal- 
ate ticklers,  popular  only  at  blind  tigers.  WThy  the  deuce 
didn't  the  Seymourites  set  to  work  and  settle  this  vexatious 
problem  for  themselves?  Must  I  undertake  a  system  of 
scientific  experiments  in  order  to  obtain  this  information 
for  the  citizens  of  Seymour  ?  Suppose  that  I  do  so,  find  that 
love  makes  drunk  come,  and  am  run  in  by  the  patrol  wagon 


424  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

while  supercharged  with  the  tender  passion :  don't  you  see 
that  this  would  militate  against  my  usefulness  as  a  Baptist 
minister  ?    How  the  hell  could  I  explain  to  my  congregation 
that  I  was  full  of  love  instead  of  licker?     Clearly  I  can- 
not afford  to  offer  myself  as  a  sacrifice  upon  the  altar  of 
science.     Should  I  proceed  to  fall  in  love  just  to  see  if  it 
would  go  to  my  head,  and  should  it  do  so,  my  Dulcina  del 
Toboso  might  marry  me   before   I   recovered   my   mental 
equipoise,  and  I  would  awaken  to  find  my  liberty  a  has- 
been  and  my  night-key  non  est.     Of  course  I  shouldn't  mind 
it  ever  so  little,  but  it  would  be  awfully  hard  on  the  lady. 
I  have  been  baptized  just  to  see  if  it  would  soak  out  any 
original  sin ;  I've  gone  up  in  a  balloon  and  down  in  a  coal 
mine  in  the  interest  of  science;  I've  ridden  on  the  pilot  of 
a  locomotive  for  the  sake  of  the  sensation;  I've  permitted 
myself  to  be  inoculated  with  the  virus  of  Christian  charity 
just  to  see  if  it  would  "take;"  I've  tampered  with  almost 
every  known  intoxicant,  from  the  insiduous  mescal  of  the 
ertswhile  Montezumas  to  the  mountain  nectar  of  Eastern 
Tennessee,  but  I  draw  the  line  at  love.    Will  it  intoxicate? 
Prithee,  good  sirs,  I  positively  decline  to  experiment.    How- 
ever, if  hearsay  evidence  be  admissible  I'm  willing  to  take 
the  stand.     To  the  best  of  my  knowledge  and  belief  love 
will  pick  a  man  up  quicker  and  throw  him  down  harder 
than  even  the  double-distilled  brand  of  prohibition  busthead. 
Like  champagne  at  2  g.  m.,  it  is  good  to  look  upon  and 
pleasant  to  the  palate;  but  at  last  it  biteth  like  a  serpent 
and  stingeth  like  an  able-bodied  bumble-bee  in  a  pair  of 
blue-jean  pants.     Like  alcoholism,  love  lies  in  wait  for  the 
young  and  unwary — approaches  the  victim  so  insiduously 
that  ere  he  is  aware  of  danger  he's  a  gone  sucker.     The 
young  man  goeth  forth  in  the  early  evening  and  his  patent 
leathers.    His  coat-tail  pockets  bulge  with  caramels  and  his 
one  silk  handkerchief,  perfumed  with  attar  of  roses,  reposeth 
with  studied  negligence  in  his  bosom.     He  saith  unto  him- 
self, "I  will  sip  the  nectar  of  the  blind  deity  but  I  will  not 
become  drunken,  for  verily  I  know  when  to  ring  myself 
down."     He  calleth  upon  the    innocent  damosel  with  soft 
eyes  and  lips  like  unto  a  cleft  cherry  when  purple  with  its 
own  sweetness,  and  she  singeth  unto  him  with  a  voice  that 
hath  the  low  sweet  melody  of  an  aeolian  harp,  and  squozeth 
his  hand  in  the  gloaming,  sigheth  just  a.  wee  wee  sigh  that 
endeth  in  a  blush.     And  behold  it  cometh  to  pass  that  when 
the  gay  young  man  doth  stagger  down  the  doorsteps  of  her 
dear  father's  domicile  he  knoweth  not  whether  he  is  hoof- 
ing it  to  Klondyke  or  riding  an  erratic  mustang  into  Mex- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  425 

ico.  He  is  drunken  with  the  sweetness  of  it  all  and  glad 
of  it.  And  she?  Oh  she  lets  him  down  easy — sends  him 
an  engraved  invitation  to  her  marriage  with  some  guy  "with 
oodles  of  the  long  green  whom  her  parent  on  her  mother's 
side  has  corraled  at  the  matrimonial  bargain  counter.  Then 
the  young  man  has  a  case  of  what  we  Chermans  call  Kat- 
zen jammer,  and  swears  an  almighty  swore  never  to  do  so 
any  more.  But  he  does.  When  a  man  once  contracts  the 
habit  of  being  in  love  there's  no  help  for  him.  It  is  a 
strange  stimulant  which  acts  upon  the  blood  like  the  oen- 
anthic  of  old  wine,  upon  the  soul  like  the  perfume  of  jas- 
mine buds.  He  has  felt  its  mighty  spell,  more  potent  than 
the  poppy's  juice  or  the  distillation  of  yellow  corn  that  has 
waved  its  golden  bannerets  on  Kentucky's  sun-kissed  hills 
— more  strangely  sweet  than  music  heard  at  midnight  across 
a  moonlit  lake  or  the  soul-sensuous  dream  of  the  lotus 
eaters'  land.  For  the  spell  of  the  poppy's  dreamy  drug  and 
the  charm  of  the  yellow  corn  whose  spirit  breeds  dangerous 
lightnings  in  the  blood,  the  skill  of  man  has  provided  a 
panacea ;  but  "love  is  strong  as  death,"  says  David's  wisest 
son.  Will  love  intoxicate?  Rather!  I  should  say  that 
Solomon  was  drunk  with  love  when  he  wrote  the  Canticles : 

"Let  him  kiss  me  with  the  kisses  of  his  mouth,  for  thy  love  is 
better  than  wine." 

When  a  man  is  drunken  he  sees  strange  varieties  of  ser- 
pents. That's  what  ailed  Adam  and  Eve.  They  kept  intoxi- 
cated with  their  own  primordial  sweetness  until  they  got  the 
jimmies  and  saw  a  talking  snake  prancing  around  the  ever- 
green aisles  of  Eden  with  legs  like  unto  a  prima  donna.  At 
least  I  suppose  the  Edenic  serpent  was  built  that  way,  for 
the  Lord  cursed  it  and  compelled  it  to  go  on  its  belly  all 
the  days  of  its  life.  Hence  the  Lord  must  have  pulled  its 
leg.  So  to  speak,  or  words  to  that  effect.  As  an  intoxicant 
love  affects  one  differently  from  liquor.  A  man  drunk  on 
bourbon  wants  to  trail  his  coat-tails  down  the  middle  of  the 
plank  turnpike  and  advise  the  natives  that  he  is  in  town. 
The  man  drunk  on  love  yearns  to  hide  away  from  the  busy 
haunts  of  men  and  write  poetry  for  the  magazines.  The 
one  is  sentenced  to  ten  days  in  the  bat-cave  and  the  other 
to  pay  some  woman's  board.  Verily  the  way  of  the  trans- 
gressor is  hard.  Some  people  manage  to  worry  thro'  life 
without  ever  becoming  drunken  on  either  liquor  or  love. 
They  marry  for  money,  or  to  secure  housekeepers,  and  drink 
pink  lemonade  and  iced  buttermilk  until  there's  clabber  in 
their  blood.  They  "like"  their  mates,  but  do  not  love  them, 


426  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

and  their  watery  babes  grow  up  and  become  Baptists.  Their 
affections  are  to  the  real  article  what  dengue  is  to  yellow 
fever.  Temperance  is  a  good  thing  in  its  way;  but  the 
man  who  is  temperate  in  love  is  not  to  be  trusted.  The  true 
man  or  woman  can  no  more  love  moderately  than  a  powder 
magazine  can  explode  on  the  installment  plan.  When  the 
cup  once  touches  their  lips  it  is  drained  to  the  very  dregs. 
The  chalice  is  not  passed  by  human  hands — the  gods  give 
and  the  gods  withhold.  Hence  it  is  that  we  ever  find  Love's 
bacchanals  beating  against  the  social  bars.  We  laugh  at 
the  man  who  flushed  with  wine  disregards  the  peace  and 
dignity  of  the  state;  but  we  frown  upon  the  woman  who 
drunk  with  love  sins  against  our  social  laws.  Man's  brewed 
enchantments  may  be  set  aside  by  acts  of  human  will;  but 
the  wine  of  love  creeps  like  a  subtle  perfume  thro'  all  the 
senses  whether  we  will  or  no,  filling  the  brain  with  madness, 
the  heart  with  fire. 


A  NATIONAL  POEM. 

The  Author's  Publishing  Company  is  the  name  of  a 
New  York  concern  that  is  preparing  to  play  Maecenas  to 
merit  and  endow  men  of  genius  with  what  John  J.  Ingalls 
would  call  "wealth  beyond  the  dreams  of  avarice."  It  is 
sending  broadcast  over  the  country  what  purports  to  be  a 
nameless  "national  poem/'  and  chained  to  this  acephalous 
literary  morceau  is  a  proposition  to  pay  $100  in  currency 
of  the  realm  to  the  party  suggesting  the  most  appropriate 
title.  This  "poem"  purports  to  be  the  work  of  one 
Ardenas  Foster,  who  promises  to  supply  the  public  with 
130  pages  of  his  poetic  yearnings  before  the  robins  nest 
again.  We  do  not  know  who  Ardenas  may  be ;  but  sus- 
pect he  is  none  other  than  our  old  friend  Orie  Bower,  the 
erstwhile  "Poet  of  the  Rockies,"  who  has  disguised  him- 
self with  a  clean  shave,  a  paper  dickey  and  a  new  pseu- 
donym. He  writes  like  Orie.  His  muse  has  the  same 
happy-go-lucky  gait — a  confusing  compromise  between 
the  long  swinging  trot  of  a  hungry  coyote  and  the  "Lon- 
don lope,"  now  so  fashionable  with  the  New  York's 
Anglo-Maniacal  Four  Hundred.  His  lines  have  the  same 
sensuous  lilt,  his  song  the  identical  dreamy  cadence  that 
caused  the  Greasers  to  swim  the  Rio  Grande,  the  jackass 
rabbits  to  waltz  on  their  hind  legs  and  Major  Fuel  to 
climb  Mount  Franklin's  rugged  steeps  and  reflect  on  his 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  427 

latter  end  when  Orie  tuned  his  lyre  and  poured  out  his 
aesthetic  soul  in  song  as  poet-laureate  of  El  Paso's  Mc- 
Ginty  club.  Ardenas  must  be  Orie  in  disguise — or  Amelia 
Rives  Chanler  seeking  an  antidote  for  her  early  aphro- 
disiacs. We  have  room  for  but  one  verse ;  but  it's  a 
crackerjack,  the  gem  of  the  collection  and  illustrates  how 
Ardenas  can  soar  when  he  spreads  his  pinions  and  takes 
a  header  into  the  poetic  empyrean.  Those  who  desire  to 
follow  Ardenas  in  his  flight  can  secure  telescopes  at  this 
office  without  extra  charge. 

Columbia!  recurrent  pregnant  maid, 
And    bosom    throbbing  Hvith    ripe    harvest-heat, 

Till  multitudes  from  thy  fresh  garners  feed, 
And  on  thy  shores  Creation's  races  meet. 

We  fear  that  the  Author's  Publishing  Company  is  not 
doing  the  proper  thing.  We  submit  that  any  one  who 
can  put  an  appropriate  head  on  such  a  priceless  literary 
torse  deserves  more  than  a  hundred  dollars.  Ardenas  is 
nothing  if  not  original.  A  "recurring  pregnant  maid"  is 
an  idea  with  which  even  the  immortal  Bard  of  Avon  was 
unacquainted.  Dante  never  dreamed  of  such  a  thing. 
Milton  knew  naught  of  "recurring  pregnant  maids."  And 
we  confess,  with  a  feeling  akin  to  shame,  that  we  had  not 
thought  of  the  fair  sex  in  that  light  ourselves — and  we 
have  associated  with  Rebecca  Merlindy  Johnson  a  good 
deal.  Ardenas  is  the  avatar  of  originality.  He  is  meta- 
phor personified.  He  is  poetic  license  with  the  bridle  off. 
He  explores  new  paths  of  poesy  with  the  reckless  aban- 
don of  a  troubadour.  He  opens  new  vistas  in  literature 
with  a  simple,  presto,  change!  But  he  hurries  us  along 
too  fast.  He  doesn't  allow  us  time  to  become  well  ac- 
quainted with  the  ofttimes  pregnant  maid  before  asking  us 
to  contemplate  creation's  races  meeting  on  her  "shores/' 
But  we  suppose  it  is  all  right.  Certainly  nothing  can  be 
impossible  to  a  pregnant  maid.  She  may  have  not  only 
shores,  but  seas  and  a  north  and  south  pole,  for  aught  we 
know.  If  Ardenas  says  so  we'll  believe  it.  We  should 
trust  our  men  of  genius  and  follow  unquestioningly 
whithersoever  they  lead.  We  shall  wait  for  the  remain- 
der of  Ardenas  Foster's  book  with  impatience.  We  are 
anxious  to  see  what  may  be  the  peculiarities  of  the  rest 
of  his  maids.  But  we  trust  that  he  will  not  permit  crea- 
tion's races  to  feed  on  them  or  trample  their  "shores" 
with  hob-nailed  shoes.  At  least  not  while  the  maids  are 
pregnant.  We  trust  that  in  sending  out  autograph  copies 
to  the  press  Ardenas  will  not  overlook  the  Iconoclast.  If 


428  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

the  book  contains  his  portrait  as  a  frontispiece  we  will 
be  only  the  better  pleased.  There's  a  goat  in  this  town 
we've  got  it  in  for. 


BRANN    ON    HUMBUGS. 

[The  following  excerpts  are  from  Mr.  Brann's  lecture  at  Dallas 
Opera  House,  October  17,  1895.] 

A  discourse  on  political  humbugs  were  incomplete 
without  some  reference  to  the  young  man  whom  Texas, 
in  a  moment  of  mental  aberration,  raised  to  the  chief 
magistracy.  I  learn  from  a  sermon  recently  inflicted  on 
the  long-suffering  inhabitants  of  this  city,  that  Son 
Charles  is  "our  heroic  young  Christian  governor."  How 
he  must  have  changed  during  the  last  few  months! 
Shakespeare  was  probably  viewing  the  Texas  politician 
with  prophetic  eye  when  he  declared  that  in  the  great 
Drama  of  Life  a  man  plays  many  parts.  Culberson  is  the 
only  one,  however,  who  has  yet  succeeded  in  playing 
them  all  at  one  and  the  same  time.  A  man  who  can  run 
with  the  hare  politically  while  holding  with  the  hounds 
personally,  is  almost  too  versatile  to  be  virtuous.  "Our 
heroic  young  Christian  governor!"  That  preacher  evi- 
dently doesn't  know  Charles.  Or  if  he  does  his  idea  of 
Christianity  is  not  so  altitudinous  that  he  can  stand  on 
its  apex  and  keep  the  flies  off  the  man  in  the  moon. 
Culberson  is  a  politician  who  enjoyed  excellent  health 
before  he  entered  the  public  service.  He  is  all  things  to 
all  men  and — "nothing  to  nobody."  He's  so  slippery  that 
he  couldn't  stand  on  the  partisan  platform  to  which  he 
owes  his  political  elevation.  In  the  last  gubernatorial 
election  pretty  much  every  man  who  voted  for  Culberson 
felt  that  he  hand  a  lead-pipe  cinch  on  a  fat  office,  and 
the  remainder  were  certain  he  would  work  four-and- 
twenty  hours  a  day  to  put  in  effect  their  pet  reforms. 
They  are  wiser  now.  In  1890  Charlie  sailed  into  the  at- 
torney-generalship on  the  ample  coat-tails  of  one  J.  S 
Hogg,  and  in  less  than  thirty  days  he  was  conspiring  to 
retire  his  chief  after  one  term  and  slip  into  his  official 
shoes.  The  trouble  appears  to  be  that  the  youngster  was 
pulled  before  he  was  ripe — before  his  political  integrity 
had  time  to  harden,  or  his  crop  of  wild  oats  was  well  in 
the  ground. 

Now  I  want  it  distinctly  understood  that  I  am  not  the 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  429 

apologist  of  pugilism;  I  am  the  apostle  of  the  white- 
winged  Goddess  of  Peace.  I  always  carry  a  cruse  of  oil 
in  my  hip-pocket  to  cast  upon  the  troubled  waters.  I  have 
a  pacific  effect  on  all  with  whom  I  come  in  contact.  Chil- 
dren quit  crying  when  they  see  me  coming,  women  speak 
well  of  their  neighbors,  men  respect  each  other's  political 
opinions,  preachers  engage  in  silent  prayer  and  the  lion 
and  the  lamb  lie  down  together.  And  that's  no  lie.  But 
as  between  pugilism  and  hypocrisy  I  prefer  the  former. 
I  would  rather  see  men  pound  each  other  for  a  fat  purse 
than  play  the  canting  Pharisee  to  promote  their  political 

fortunes. 

*         *         * 

Let  us  look  to  the  record  of  "our  heroic  young  Christian 
governor."  During  the  four  years  he  officiated  as  attor- 
ney-general he  made  no  determined  effort  to  enforce  the 
law  then  in  effect  prohibiting  pugilism.  Prizefights  were 
pulled  off  at  Galveston,  San  Antonio,  El  Paso  and  other 
Texas  points  after  having  been  duly  advertised  in  the 
daily  press.  He  was  elevated  to  the  chief  magistracy  of 
the  State,  and  the  slugging  matches  continued — mills 
between  brawny  but  unskilled  boxers,  who  relied  u^on 
brute  strength,  and  pounded  each  other  to  a  pumice  to 
make  a  hoodlum  holiday.  Some  of  these  meetings  were 
especially  brutal — as  matches  between  amateur  athletes 
are  likely  to  be;  but  "our  heroic  young  Christian  gov- 
ernor" saw  no  occasion  to  get  his  Ebenezer  up.  He  sim- 
ply sawed  wood — didn't  care  a  continental  whether  there 
was  a  law  prohibiting  bruising  bouts  or  not. 

And  the  ministerial  associations  were  too  busy  taking 
up  collections  to  send  Bibles  and  blankets,  salvation  and 
missionary  soup  to  the  pagans  of  the  antipodes  to  pay 
much  attention  to  these  small-fry  pugs.  They  let  our 
blessed  "Texas  civilization"  take  care  of  itself,  while  they 
agonized  over  a  job  lot  of  lazy  negroes  whose  souls  ain't 
worth  a  sou-markee  in  blocks  of  five;  who  wouldn't  walk 
into  heaven  if  the  gates  were  wide  open,  but  once  inside 
would  steal  the  eternal  throne  if  it  wasn't  spiked  down. 
No  Epworth  Leaguers  or  Christian  Endeavorers  where- 
ased,  resoluted  or  perorated  until  their  tongues  were 
worn  to  a  frazzle,  trying  to  "preserve  the  honor  of  our 
ger-ate  and  gal-orious  State  by  suppressing  feather- 
pillow  pugilism."  Why?  I  don't  know;  do  you?  Of 
course  some  carping  critics  declare  it  was  because  the  world 
was  not  watching  these  brutal  slugging  matches  between 
youths  to  pugilistic  fortune  and  fame  unknown;  that  it 


430  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

was  because  the  professionally  pious  had  no  opportunity 
to  make  a  grandstand  play  and  get  their  names  in  print — 
no  chance  to  pose  in  the  eye  of  the  universe  as  the  con- 
servators of  our  fin  de  siecle  civilization.  But  then  these 
Doubting  Thomases  are  ever  ready  to  make  a  mock  of 
the  righteous  and  put  cockleburrs  in  the  back  hair  of  the 
godly.  I  dislike  to  criticise  "the  cloth."  I  am  prone  to 
believe  that  the  preachers  always  do  the  best  they  know 
how ;  still,  I  must  confess  that  I  am  unable  to  muster  up 
much  admiration  for  the  brass  band  variety  of  "religion" 
or  the  tutti-frutti  trademark  of  "respectability." 

Had  the  belief  not  been  bred  in  my  bones  that  there 
is  a  God  in  Israel,  these  little  2x4  preachers,  with  their 
great  moral  hippodrome — their  purblind  blinking  at 
mountains  and  much-ado  about  molehills — would  drive 
me  to  infidelity.  By  their  egregious  folly,  their  fiery  de- 
nunciation of  all  men  who  dare  disagree  with  them,  their 
attempt  to  make  the  State  subservient  to  the  church,  *-o 
establish  an  imperium  in  imperio — by  their  mischievous, 
meddling  in  matters  that  in  nowise  concern  them,  they 
are  bringing  the  beautiful  religion  of  Christ  into  con- 
tempt— are  doing  more  to  foster  doubt  than  did  all  the 
Humes  and  Voltaires  and  Paines  that  ever  wielded  pen. 

Now  don't  get  the  idea  that  I  am  antagonistic  to  the 
preachers.  Far  from  it.  I  am  something  of  a  minister 
myself;  and  we  who  have  been  called  to  labor  in  the 
Lord's  vineyard — at  so  much  per  annum — must  stand 
together.  I  admire  the  ministers  in  a  general  way — and 
"whom  the  Lord  loveth  he  chasteneth."  I  feel  that  it  is 
my  duty  to  pull  them  tenderly  but  firmly  back  by  the 
little  alpaca  coat-tails  whenever  they  have  made  mistakes 
— to  reprove  them  in  all  gentleness  when  I  find  them 
fanning  themselves  with  their  ears  for  the  amusement  of 
the  mob. 

But  to  return  to  "our  heroic  young  Christian  governor." 
When  it  was  first  proposed  to  bring  the  great  fistic  carni- 
val and  a  million  dollars  to  Dallas,  Gov.  Culberson  had 
nothing  to  say.  It  was  popularly  supposed  that  he  under- 
stood the  law  and  would  respect  it.  The  impression  got 
abroad  that  he  felt  rather  friendly  to  the  enterprise  because 
it  would  put  500  scudi  in  the  depleted  coffers  of  the  public 
and  turn  a  great  deal  of  ready  money  loose  within  the  con- 
fines of  Texas.  He  may  not  have  been  directly  responsible 
for  this  popular  idea,  but  he  certainly  did  nothing  to  dis- 
courage it.  Arrangements  were  perfected,  important  con- 
tracts entered  into,  a  vast  amount  of  money  invested  that 


BRANN,  TiIE  ICONOCLAST  431 

would  prove  a  complete  loss  if  the  enterprise  collapsed. 
Then  Culberson  began  to  complain.  He  suddenly  discov- 
ered that  pugilism  was  a  brutal  sport,  which  should  be 
suppressed.  His  conversion  was  as  instantaneous  as  that 
of  Saul  of  Tarsus.  It  were  an  insult  to  the  intelligence  of 
a  hopeless  idiot  to  say  he  did  not  know  the  Corbett-Fitz- 
simmons  affair  would  prove  far  less  brutal  than  a  hundred 
fis.tic  encounters  which  he,  as  attorney-general  and  gov- 
ernor, had  tacitly  encouraged — but  his  jewel  of  consistency 
had  evidently  gone  to  join  his  diamond  stud.  Col.  Dan 
Stuart  didn't  appear  inclined  to  do  anything  to  ease  the 
young  man's  agony,  and  it  rapidly  went  from  bad  to  worse. 
The  Hurt  decision  was  rendered,  and  the  moral  volcano 
of  "our  heroic  young  Christian  governor"  began  to  erupt 
in  earnest.  He  declared  that  he  would  override  the  court 
of  criminal  appeals  '.'if  men  enough  can  be  found  in  Texas 
to  do  it" — gave  an  excellent  imitation  of  an  anarchist  who 
is  hungering'  for  canned  gore.  After  this  blood-to-horses'- 
bridles  bluff  he  grew  quiescent — waited,  Micawber-like,  for 
something  to  turn  up.  And  still  Dan  Stuart  didn't  say  a 
word.  Then  "our  heroic  young  Christian  governor"  broke 
out  in  a  new  place.  The  legislature  was  convened  in  ex- 
traordinary session  to  prevent  a  brace  of  pugilists  smash- 
ing the  immortal  ichor  out  of  modern  civilization.  It  was 
a  great  moral  aggregation — almost  equal  to  Artemus 
Ward's  WaxWurx!  I  am  convinced  of  this,  for  it  em- 
ployed two  doctors  of  divinity — at  public  cost,  of  course — 
to  pray  over  it  a  minute  each  morning,  for  $5  per  diem 
each.  Everybody  expected  the  president  of  the  Florida 
Athletic  Club  to  go  to  Austin  and  make  an  earnest  free 
silver  speech.  Even  the  lawmakers  were  looking  for  him; 
but  he  didn't  go — and  the  result  was  what  might  have  been 
expected.  The  law-builders  with  the  worst  private  records 
had  the  most  to  say  about  public  morality.  Men  whose  I. 
O.  U.'s  are  not  good  in  a  game  of  penny  ante;  whose  faces 
arc  familiar  to  the  inmates  of  every  disreputable  dive  be- 
tween the  Sabine  and  the  Rio  Bravo;  who  go  to  their 
legislative  duties  from  the  gambling-room  and  with  six- 
shooters  in  the  busts  of  their  breeches,  grew  tearful  over 
the  prospective  ''disgrace  of  Texas"  by  a  manly  boxing 
bout.  Hell  hath  no  fury  like  a  legislative:  humbug  scorned 
— while  he's  holding  his  hand  behind  him. 


But  the  wrath  of  "our  heroic  young  Christian  governor" 
did  not  abate  with  the  enactment  of  a  law  forbidding  prize- 


432  BRANN,  THE  ICONQCLAST 

fights — such  a  law  as  he  had  flagrantly  failed  to  enforce. 
The  promoters  of  what  the  court  of  criminal  appeals  de- 
clared a  lawful  enterprise  were  arrested  and  dragged  before 
the  grand  jury  of  Travis  county,  which  appears  to  have 
taken  the  entire  earth  under  its  protectorate.  Failing  an 
opportunity  to  prosecute  them  for  an  offense  against  the 
laws  of  the  land,  the  powers  at  Austin  proceeded  to  prose- 
cute them  on  the  hypothesis  that  they  were  conspiring  to 
wreck  the  universe. 

And  what  was  their  offense?  They  had  "conspired"  to 
pay  $500  into  the  public  treasury  and  bring  a  million  more 
to  Dallas.  They  had  "'conspired"  to  bring  several  thou- 
sand respectable  business  men  to  Texas  from  all  parts  of 
the  Union  and  furnished  employment  at  good  wages  for 
hundreds  of  hungry  men. 

While  I  do  not  much  admire  pugilism  as  a  profession, 
I  must  say  that  the  promoters  of  the  enterprise  conducted 
themselves  much  better  than  did  "our  heroic  young  Chris- 
tian governor,"  and  those  alleged  saints  who  proposed  to 
shoulder  their  little  shotguns  and  help  him  override  the 
courts — to  butcher  their  brethren  in  cold  blood  to  prevent 
an  encounter  between  .brawny  athletes  armed  with  pillows; 
to  sustain  "modern  civilization"  by  transforming  the  met- 
ropolis of  Texas  into  a  charnel-house — to  prevent,  by 
brutal  homicide  in  the  name  of  Christ  their  neighbors 
exercising  those  liberties  accorded  them  by  the  laws  of 

the  land. 

*         *         * 

Curious,  this  modern  civilization  of  which  we  hear  so 
much.  During  the  palmy  days  of  Roman  grandeur  and 
Grecian  glory,  their  athletes  fought  with  the  terrible  cestus 
to  win  a  crown  of  oak  or  laurel ;  but  then  Rome  never  pro- 
duced a  Rev.  Seasholes,  nor  Greece  a  Senator  Bowser. 
The  Imperial  City  did  manage  to  breed  a  Brutus  and  a 
Cato,  but  never  proved  equal  to  a  Culberson  Think  of  a 
Texas  legislature,  composed  chiefly  of  illiterate  jabber- 
whacks  who  string  out  the  sessions  interminably  for  the 
sake  of  the  $2  a  day — imagine  these  fellows,  each  with  a 
large  pendulous  ear  to  the  earth,  listening  for  the  approach 
of  some  Pegasus  to  carry  him  to  Congress — teaching  the 
aesthetics  of  civilization  to  the  divine  philosophers  of 
Greece  and  the  god-like  senators  of  Rome!  Think  of  Perry 
J.  Lewis  pulling  the  Conscript  Fathers  over  the  coals — of 
Senator  Bowser  pointing  out  civic  duties  to  Socrates;  of 
Attorney-General  Crane  giving  Julius  Caesar  a  piece  of  his 
mind ;  of  Charley  Culberson  turning  up  his  little  two-f or-a- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  433 

nickel  nose  at  the  Olympian  games!     But  perhaps  that  is 
not  the  game   "our  heroic  young  Christian  governor"   is 

most  addicted  to. 

*         *         * 

Prizefighting — even  with  pillows,  for  points — is  bad 
enough,  no  doubt;  but  there  are  worse  things.  Making 
the  Texas  people  pay  for  an  abortive  little  second-term 
gubernatorial  boom  is  one  of  them,  and  canting  hypocrisy 
by  sensation-seeking  preachers  is  another.  Can  the  church 
and  state  find  no  grander  work  than  camping  on  the  trail 
of  a  couple  of  pugilists?  Are  Gentleman  Jim  and  Kanga- 
roo Bob  the  upper  and  nether  millstones  between  which 
humanity  is  being  ground?  Are  these  the  only  obstacles 
to  the  inauguration  of  the  Golden  Age — that  era  of  Peace 
on  Earth  and  Good  Will  to  Men?  The  world  is  honey- 
combed with  crime.  Brother  Seasholes  says  there  are  800 
fallen  women  in  this  city  alone — and  I  presume  he  knows. 
But  if  these  be  half  so  many,  what  a  terrible  story  of  hu- 
man degradation — more  appalling  even  than  soft-glove 
pugilism!  Our  streets  swarm  with  able-bodied  beggars — 
young  men,  most  of  them,  whom  want  may  drive  into 
wickedness.  Human  life  is  cheap.  Men  are  slain  in  this 
alleged  Christian  land  for  less  silver  than  led  Judas  to  be- 
tray Christ.  Young  girls  are  sold  to  shame,  and  from 
squalid  attics  comes  the  cry  of  starving  babes.  The  Goths 
and  Visigoths  are  once  more  gathering,  imperiling1  civiliza- 
tion itself,  and  belief  in  God  is  fading  slowly  but  surely 
from  the  earth.  Want  and  wretchedness  skulk  in  the 
shadows  of  our  temples,  ignorance  and  crime  stalk  abroad 
at  high  noon — the  legions  of  Lucifer  are  overrunning  the 
land,  transforming  God's  beautiful  world  into  a  veritable 
Gehenna.  The  Field  of  Blood  is  filling,  the  prisons  and 
poorhouses  are  overflowing — crowded  with  wretched 
creatures  who  dared  dream  of  fame  and  fortune.  The 
great  Sea  of  Life  is  thick-strewn  with  wrecks — millions 
more  drifting  helpless  and  hopeless  upon  the  rocks.  From1 
out  the  darkness  there  come  cries  for  aid;  men  pleading 
for  employment,  women  shrieking  in  agony  of  soul,  little 
children  wailing  with  hunger  and  cold.  And  the  winds 
wax  ever  stronger,  the  waves  run  higher  and  higher,  the 
wreck  and  wraith  grow  ever  more  pitiful,  more  appalling. 
And  church  and  state  pause  in  this  mad  vortex  of  chaos 
to  prate  of  the  ills  of  pugilism;  to  legislate  and  perorate 
anent  bloodless  boxing  bouts;  to  prosecute  a  brace  of 
harmless  pugs.  The  people  ask  bread  of  the  church  and 
it  gives  them  a  stone;  they  ask  of  the  state  protection  ot 


434  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

their  lives  and  liberties,  and  it  gives  them  a  special  session 
of  the  legislature — shoots  doodle-bugs  with  a  Catling  gun — 

and  sends  them  the  bill! 

*         *         * 

But  to  recur  for  a  moment  to  the  fistic  carnival:  Have 
any  of  you  been  able  to  determine  how  the  Dallas  News 
stood  in  regard  to  that  great  enterprise?  Sometimes,  when 
I  want  to  go  on  an  intellectual  debauch,  I  read  the  News — 
or  Ayer's  Almanac.  It  appears  to  entertain  but  two  opin- 
ions, namely,  that  Uncle  S-am  should  black  the  boots  of 
John  Bull,  and  that  Grover  Cleveland  carries  the  brains 
of  the  world  in  his  beebum.  This  brace  of  abortive  ideas 
constitute  its  confession  of  faith — the  only  things  of  which 
it  feels  absolutely  certain.  When  it  tackles  anything  else  it 
wobbles  in  and  it  wobbles  out  like  an  unhappy  married  man 
trying*  to  find  his  way  home  at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning. 
A  great  diplomat  once  declared  that  language  was  made 
to  conceal  thought;  but  the  Dallas  News  employs  it  to  dis- 
guise an  intellectual  vacuum.  It  can  use  more  language 
to  say  less  than  any  other  publication  on  earth.  In  this 
particular  it  is  like  Napoleon — it  stands  wrapt  in  the  soli- 
tude of  its  own  originality. 

The  eating  of  thirty  quail  in  thirty  days  was  once  a  popu- 
lar test  of  human  endurance;  but  I  can  propose  a  more  cru- 
cial one — one  that  will  attract  more  people  to  Dallas  than 
would  even  the  Corbett-Fitzsimmons  fight.  Let  the  people 
of  this  city  offer  a  fat  purse  for  the  man  who  can  read  the 
editorial  page  of  the  Dallas  News  thirty  days  in  succession 
without  degenerating  into  a  driveling  idiot.  It  is  a  mental 
impossibility,  of  course;  but  perhaps  my  good  friend 
"Dorry"  can  be  persuaded  to  attempt  it — to  hoist  himself 
with  his  own  petard.  No  man  born  of  woman  will  ever 
accomplish  it.  Massillon  would  become  a  mental  bankrupt 
within  the  month  and  Socrates  have  to  be  tapped  for  the 
simples  before  reaching  the  half-way  house. 

The  News  is  troubled  with  a  chronic  case  of  Anglo- 
mania. Whenever  Columbia  has  a  controversy  of  any 
kind  with  Brittania,  the  News  hastens  to  ally  itself  with 
the  Britisher;  but  in  matters  concerning  the  welfare  of 
the  city  of  Dallas  it  has  little  to  say.  It  did  manifest  a 
slight  inclination  to  take  up  for  the  fistic  enterprise — 
fearfully  slid  one  foot  to  terra-firma ;  but  when  the  success 
of  the  carnival  became  doubtful  the  News  hastened  to 
resume  its  time-honored  position  astride  the  fence,  and  it 
has  hung  there  ever  since — like  a  foul  dish-rag  across  a 
wire  clothes  line.  It's  the  greatest  journalistic  'Fraid  on 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  435 

the  face  of  the  earth.  It  doesn't  dare  to  risk  the  opinion 
that  water  is  wet.  But  probably  it  isn't  sure  of  it.  It  is 
just  as  well,  however,  for  if  it  did  know,  it  couldn't  leak 
the  information  in  less  than  a  column.  The  editorial  page 
of  the  Dallas  News  reminds  me  of  the  Desert  of  Sahara 
after  a  simoon — it  is  such  an  awful  waste  of  space.  If  I 
had  a  five-year-old  boy  who  couldn't  say  more  in  fifteen 
minutes  than  the  Dallas  News  has  said  in  the  last  dozen 
years,  I'd  refuse  to  father  him. 

One  of  the  greatest  frauds  of  modern  times  is  the  pol- 
icy-playing newspaper.  The  "Archimedean  lever,"  as 
applied  to  daily  journalism  is  a  fake  of  the  first  magni- 
tude. There  is  not  a  morning  newspaper  in  Texas  pos- 
sessing sufficient  political  influence  to  elect  a  pound- 
master.  In  fact,  their  support  will  damn  any  politician 
eternally,  for  the  people  wisely  conclude  that  what  the 
alleged  ''great  dailies"  support  is  a  pretty  good  thing  for 
them  to  oppose.  Hogg  would  not  have  reached  the  gov- 
ernorship but  for  the  blatant  opposition  of  the  morning 
press.  Its  friendship  for  George  Clark  was  the  upas- 
shadow  in  which  he  perished  politically.  There  hasn't 
been  an  important  law  enacted  in  Texas  during  the  last 
ten  years  that  it  didn't  oppose.  And  yet  men  actually 
imagine  that  they  cannot  succeed  in  politics,  business  or 
letters  without  the  assistance  of  that  great  "moulder  of 
public  opinion!"  Let  me  tell  you  that  every  success  this 
country  has  witnessed  during  the  past  three  decades  was 
achieved  despite  the  morning  press.  To  paraphrase  Owen 
Meredith : 

"Let  a  man  once  show  the  press  that  he  feels 
Afraid  of  its  bark,  and  'twill  fly  at  his  heels; 
Let  him  fearlessly  face,  'twill  leave  him  alone; 
But  'twill  fawn  at  his  feet  if  he  flings  it  a  bone." 


A    NEW    YORK    SAWCIETY    SHEET. 

Some  few  of  my  readers  may  have  incidentally  heard 
of  a  little  sawciety  paper  published  in  New  York  City 
called  Town  Topics.  Its  editor,  having  fired  a  couple  of 
front-page  malodors  at  me,  sends  me  a  marked  copy, 
thinking  perhaps  I  may  be  induced  to  call  general  atten- 
tion to  the  fact  that  he  is  on  the  earth.  It  is  impossible 
for  me  to  accord  a  free  notice  to  every  impudent  pamph- 
leteer and  .22-caliber  editor  who  attacks  me  for  adver- 
tising purposes  only.  Believing  with  Tennyson  that  'tis 


436  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

"weakness  to  be  wroth  with  weakness,"  I  seldom  waste 
any  shot  on  sawciety  sheets.  Nor  am  I  in  the  habit  of 
taking  up  the  gage  thrown  down  by  papers  that  exist  by 
pandering  to  pruriency,  knowing  that  if  given  time  they 
will  stink  themselves  into  a  state  of  "innocuous  desue- 
tude." Town  Topics,  however,  seems  to  be  regarded  with 
some  degree  of  toleration  by  New  York's  "h'upper  suk- 
kles,"  and  may,  therefore,  be  worth  a  moment's  attention 
as  indicating  the  moral  and  mental  drift  of  our  soi-disant 
"best  sawciety."  Social  as  well  as  medical  doctors  some- 
times find  the  handling  of  very  dirty  subjects  an  impera- 
tive duty.  Town  Topics  is  what  is  known  in  the  terse  ver- 
nacular of  Hungry  Hill  and  Tincan  Alley  as  a  journalistic 
"nancy" — a  trifle  too  dirty  for  decency  and  too  epicene  for 
aggressive  immorality.  It  is  one  of  those  papers  which 
an  imbecile  may  understand  much  better  than  a  man  of 
strong  mentality,  because  the  latter  seeks  a  raison  d'  etre 
for  everything.  Its  distinguished  feature  is  a  dreary 
waste  of  inane  tittle-tattle  anent  the  doings  and  mis- 
doings of  uppertendom.  It  can  tell  you  to  a  minute  when 
the  charming,  beautiful  and  accomplished  Miss  Isolde 
DePeyster  Hamfat-Crupper  became  engaged  to  the  re- 
doubtable Count  Orlando  Bombastico  Furioso  Marraroni 
de  Cagliostro,  how  many  buttons  she  will  wear  on  the 
bifurcated  garment  of  her  wedding  lingerie,  and  whether 
the  broken  windows  in  the  count's  ancestral  castle  are 
stuffed  with  old  hats  or  baled  hay.  It  knows  how  often 
J.  J.  Van  Alen  changes  his  sox  and  with  what  material 
the  exuberant  basement  of  T.  Suffem  Tailor's  riding 
britches  are  half-soled — information  in  nowise  to  be  de- 
spised in  this  era  boasting  itself  heir  of  all  the  ages.  It 
knows,  and  relates  with  many  winks  and  nods  and 
sayshes  and  sayshes,  with  ostentatious  concealment  of 
names  but  not  of  persons,  how  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Stubantwist 
quarreled  during  their  honeymoon,  what  occasioned  the 
Vanderbiltian  divorce,  and  the  Drayton-Astor  estrange- 
ment with  the  subsequent  duel  in  which  "never  any  died." 
All  of  which  is  strengthening  to  the  mind  as  drinking 
sweetened  wind  out  of  a  toy  balloon  is  to  the  body. 
Town  Topics  has  other  features  in  a  lighter  vein  which 
make  it  popular  with  morbid  young  persons  just  verging 
on  pubescence,  and  who  need  a  mild  purgative  and  plenty 
of  exercise  in  the  open  air.  To  precocious  kids  in  the 
Werterian  state,  Town  Topics  is  a  valuable  pons  asinorium, 
being  a  very  charming-  cross  between  a  vermiculous 
diaper  and  the  toga  virilis.  Its  stories  are  intended  for 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  437 

neurotics  only.  They  have  all  the  shudder  and  groan  of 
a  nigger  with  the  buck  ague,  the  inexpressible  longing  of 
a  hound  pup  fondly  eyeing  a  rump-bone  through  an  im- 
passable picket  fence.  They  are  dank  with  a  helpless, 
hopeless  dismalness  which  suggests  death  by  dope  to 
escape  the  pangs  of  pruriency,  and  have  all  the  unctu- 
osity  of  a  hot  corn-dodger  slathered  with  sop.  Its  heroes 
seldom  do  anything  awfully  dreadful,  but  this  fact  is 
never  the  fault  of  its  heroines.  It  is  a  kinetoscope  exhibi- 
tion of  Madame  Potiphar  -and  Joseph  that  makes  you 
want  to  encourage  the  young  Hebrew  with  a  club. 
Town  Topics  is  the  chief  exponent  of  that  soulful  decadence 
of  which  Oscar  Wilde  was  the  high  priest.  But  perhaps 
I  do  the  great  English  pervert  an  injustice.  He  had  some 
inturbidated  idea  of  attaining  the  beautiful  through  the 
brutal,  of  going  to  heaven  by  way  of  hell.  He  saw  that 
the  rose  springs  from  rottenness,  that  sweet  perfumes 
are  extracted  from  impurities,  that  the  foul  emanations 
of  earth  make  the  lightnings  flash  and  roll  the  thunder 
drums  of  heaven,  and  was  really  striving  in  a  blind  way 
toward  better  things  when  mired  in  the  serbonian  bogs 
of  his  own  bestiality;  but  the  editor  of  the  paper  in  ques- 
tion bedaubs  himself  with  the  slime  of  sewers,  not  be- 
cause it  nurtures  beauty  and  fragrance,  but  because  it 
breeds  malodors  and  maggots.  A  man  may  be  pardoned 
for  handling  muck  if  it  be  to  build  therewith  a  Jacob's 
Ladder,  or  even  a  Tower  of  Babel  to  reach  high  heaven ; 
but  the  Town  Topics  man  has  no  other  object  than  that  of 
the  barefoot  schoolboy  who  makes  a  squirt  up  between 
his  toes — he  simply  enjoys  the  sensation.  Not  being 
skilled  in  teratology,  I  am  unable  to  assign  "The  Saun- 
terer"  to  a  proper  place  among  the  mental  misfits  and 
moral  abnormalities ;  but  his  articles  suggest  some  tooth- 
less old  sybarite  in  whom  age  has  caused  perversion  in- 
stead of  repentance,  and  whose  soul  is  ever  rioting  in  the 
nameless  infamies  of  the  Orient.  There  is  a  faint  sug- 
gestion in  all  his  stuff,  not  of  Margery,  Moll  and  Meg, 
but  of  a  married  sawciety  beaut  rolling  home  in  a  closed 
hack  in  the  early  dawn,  with  a  chappie  holding  her  head 
while  the  champagne  and  pate  de  foie  gras  leaves  its  intra- 
parietal  recess  and  drules  over  the  front  elevation  of  her 
decollette.  I  can  cheerfully  recommend  Town  Topics  to  any 
one  in  need  of  an  aspositic,  and  suggest  it  to  the  "mind- 
cure^  mountebanks  as  a  valuable  succedaneum  for  nux 
vomica.  It  should  be  the  official  organ  of  every  suicide  club 
in  the  country,  being  well  calculated  to  disgust  every  sane 


438  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

man  with  the  whole  human  race  and  make  him  desire  a 
speedy  death.  Such  is  the  journalistic  favorite  of  New 
York's  Four  Hundred.  No  wonder  that  Gotham  sawciety 
has  become  simply  a  nest  of  epicene  Anglo-maniacs  and 
whining  Mugwumps.  Should  a  man  attempt  the  publica- 
tion of  such  a  paper  in  Texas  we'd  hang  him,  for  the  same 
reason  that  we  kill  glandered  horses,  send  imbeciles  to 
the  asylum  and  eliminate  lice. 


GODEY'S  MAGAZINE  FOR  MOKES. 

My  attention  has  just  been  called  to  the  fact  that  Godey's 
Lady  Book — Godey's  Magazine,  as  it  is  now  called — is  still 
upon  the  earth.  I  have  before  me  the  first  copy  thereof  I 
have  seen  for  a  quarter  of  a  century,  the  second  one  I  ever 
examined.  I  remember  well  that  when  a  kid  I  asked  my 
sister  for  paper  of  which  to  build  a  kite,  and  she  gave  me 
a  copy  of  Godey's  Lady  Book,  advising  me  at  the  same 
time  to  "tie  a  grindstone  to  it  for  a  tail,"  it  being,  she  said, 
"the  lightest  thing  in  literature."  I  examined  it  and  found 
in  it  a  thin,  sloppy  periodical,  containing  some  hay-fever 
fiction,  a  number  of  impossible  fashion-plates  and  cholera- 
morbid  sauce  recipes.  I  supposed,  if  I  thought  about  it  at 
all,  that  Godey's  had  gone  to  the  rubbish  heap  long  ago; 
but  it  seems  that  "the  lightest  thing  in  literature"  has  man- 
aged to  keep  afloat,  heaven  knows  how  or  why,  while 
scores  of  better  magazines  have  been  buried.  Perchance 
an  inscrutable  providence  has  preserved  it  that  it  might 
eventually  become  the  fashionable  magazine  of  the  negro 
aristocracy  of  the  feminine  gender,  a  beatitude  to  which  it 
has  attained  after  weary  pilgrimage  of  more  than  half  a 
century.  I  hasten  to  extend  to  its  present  publishers  the 
glad  hand  and  congratulate  them  on  their  enterprise,  for 
I  imagine  that  it  fills  what  the  country  editor  calls  "a  long- 
felt  want"  and  fills  it  brimming  full.  Now  that  it  has  at 
last  reached  its  intellectual  and  social  level  and  is  content 
with  its  lot,  it  should  be  accorded  every  encouragement. 
The  colored  women  of  America  are  certainly  entitled  to  a 
magazine;  and  it  seems  that  at  last  there  has  arisen  a 
counterpart  of  Eddie  Bok  to  sling  into  their  yearning  souls 
the  same  class  of  intellectual  soup  which  makes  the  Ladies' 
Home  Journal  a  perennial  joy.  And  Philadelphia  is  just 
the  place  for  a  journal  devoted  to  fashionable  colored  fe- 
males. Simultaneously  with  the  arrival  of  Godey's  Colored 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  439 

Lady  Book  for  July  the  dailies  announce  the  wedding  in 
that  city  of  a  so-called  respectable  white  woman  of  alleged 
good  family  with  a  coon,  the  interesting  ceremony  being 
performed  by  the  rector  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church 
of  the  Crucified.  The  name  of  this  progressive  female  who 
has  started  in  to  solve  the  race  problem  was  Constance 
Mackenzie.  As  she  loves  niggers  so  well,  let  us  devoutly 
pray  that  she  will  give  birth  to  a  brace  of  brats  as  often 
as  possible,  and  that  all  her  pickaninnies  will  be  black  as 
the  hinges  of  hell.  As  for  Rev.  Villers,  who  performed  the 
ceremony,  I  trust  that  his  cup  of  joy  will  be  filled  to  over- 
flowing by  his  becoming  grandfather  to  a  bevy  of  woolly 
half-breeds,  for  I  think  it  would  improve  the  Villers'  stock 
to  graft  it  on  the  cornfield  coon.  Evidently  the  cullud  peo- 
ple are  getting  up  in  the  pictures,  and  are  entitled  to  the 
very  best  Bokism  the  Godey  Company  can  give  them.  I 
suppose  that  all  the  articles  in  the  July  number  of  that 
periodical  will  be  written  by  negroes,  as  it  has  the  subtle 
flavor  of  an  old  pair  of  sox.  ''The  Colored  Woman  of  To- 
day," is  a  subject  handled  by  Fannie  Barrie  Williams,  a 
chipper  octoroon  well  calculated  to  catch  a  Republican's 
eye.  The  article  is  illumined  with  the  portraits  of  ten  "up- 
to-date  colored  ladies,"  evidently  ranging  in  complexion 
from  a  brunette  banana  to  a  blonde  canary  bird.  Just  why 
these  notable  black  women  are  seven-eighths  white,  Fannie 
does  not  see  fit  to  inform  us.  She  frankly  assures  us,  how- 
ever, that  "there  are  thousands  of  cultured  women  of  the 
colored  race  who  are  worth  knowing,  and  are  prepared  to 
co-operate  with  white  women  in  all  good  efforts,"  etc.;  all 
of  which  is  quite  comforting,  as  I  was  beginning  to  fear 
that  these  paragons  of  their  sex  were  too1  proud  to  "co- 
operate" with  the  humble  Caucasian.  Fannie  is  quite  cer- 
tain that,  contrary  to  the  opinion  of  white  people  with 
ample  opportunity  to  study  the  Senegambian,  many  col- 
ored females  are  virtuous  as  Dian,  lovely  as  Ophelia  and 
among  "the  most  interesting  women  in  the  land."  It  may 
be  so;  but  certain  it  is  that  these  superior  creatures  do  not 
trot  around  much  in  Texas.  I  do  not  find  fault  with  Fan- 
nie for  bepraising  her  own  people  to  the  extent  of  accredit- 
ing them  with  both  virtue  and  intelligence ;  but  if  she  would 
produce  a  few  "colored  ladies"  with  a  trifle  more  fuligin- 
osity  in  their  faces  it  would  reflect  greater  credit  on  the 
race  with  which  bright  quadroons  and  chipper  octoroons 
are  peremptorily  classed.  The  fact  that  her  ten  samples 
of  estimable  woomanhood  are  chiefly  of  Caucasian  blood 
does  not  say  much  for  the  progress  of  the  blacks.  An  ani- 


440  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

mal  one  part  baboon  and  seven  parts  Bostonese  could  prob- 
ably acquire  a  taste  for  beans  arid  learn  to  relish  Browning-; 
but  his  Simian  blood  would  be  considered  a  curse  rather 
than  a  credit.  All  the  women  with  whose  portraits  Fannie 
favors  us  may  be  virtuous  as  the  wife  of  Caesar;  but  no 
one  of  them  would  be  a  full-blood  negress  if  she  could, 
while  the  fact  that  she  is  not  shows  that  her  lineage  is 
marked  by  the  bar-sinister.  As  marriages  between  Cauca- 
sians and  coons  are  not  much  encouraged  outside  the 
Episcopalian  circles  of  Philadelphia,  the  existence  of  an 
octoroon — the  creme  de  la  creme  of  "ladies  of  color,"  pre- 
supposes at  least  three  flagrant  cases  of  bastardy — and  Fan- 
nie can  scarce  complain  if  the  white  people  as  a  rule  do 
not  expect  an  evil  tree  to  bring  forth  good  fruit.  The  next 
article  in  this  interesting  number  is  a  novelette  by  one 
Frederick  W.  Pangborn,  evidently  a  coon,  for  he  not  only 
makes  a  yaller  gal  his  heroine,  but  proclaims  her  superior 
in  beauty,  education  and  general  accomplishments  to  the 
average  white  woman.  But  Freddie,  with  all  his  admiration 
for  dark-eyed  Dulcinas,  was  not  born  and  bred  in  Dixie, 
for  he  imagines  that  an  octoroon  is  not  necessarily  part 
negro.  He  succeeds,  however,  in  producing  one  by  the 
aid  of  a  white  man  and  a  mulatto  wench,  which  in  this 
part  of  God's  creation  would  be  regarded  as  very  much  of 
a  miracle.  Godey's  contains  other  articles  by  various  au- 
thors; but  as  the  thermometer  registers  90  in  proximity 
to  the  ice  box,  I  must  leave  further  examination  of  Ethi- 
opian essays  until  cooler  weather,  my  nose  already  being, 
like  that  of  Trinculo,  "in  great  indignation."  I  cannot  say 
that  Godey's  has  improved  since  a  sharp-tongued  school- 
girl contemptuously  referred  to  it  as  "the  lightest  thing 
in  literature,"  valuable  for  kite-making — if  a  grindstone 
be  tied  to  the  tail;  but  it  is  a  great  comfort  to  reflect  that 
its  present  burden  of  banalities  cannot  be  charged  up  to 
white  people.  That  its  corps  of  contributors  are  coons. 
Viewed  as  a  production  of  the  blacks  or  quarter-breeds — 
Godey's  is  not  half  bad.  Whether  the  publishing  company 
be  composed  of  coons  I  am  not  informed;  nor  have  I  been 
advised  regarding  the  color  of  the  new  editor.  It  would 
have  been  more  manly  had  the  publishers  notified  their 
white  patrons  of  the  proposed  change  in  the  color  of  their 
"Lady;"  but  as  they  take  it  solely  for  the  sauce  recipes 
aforesaid  and  to  keep  pace  with  the  improvements  in  com- 
plexion powders  they  will  probably  care  little  what  is  done 
with  the  rest  of  the  paper.  While  by  no  means  a  social 
equality  shrieker,  nor  much  in  favor  of  solving  the  race 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  441 

problem  by  fading  the  nigger  out  by  fornication,  I  like  the 
Ethiopian — in  his  place,  and  that  place  is  the  cotton  patch. 
I  have  yet  to  see  the  nigger,  male  or  female,  full-blood  or 
quarter-breed,  who  wasn't  irrevocably  ruined  by  being  re- 
lieved of  the  necessity  of  manual  labor.  Take  a  buck  out 
of  the  cotton  and  dress  him  in  broadcloth  and  he  isn't  half 
worth  killing.  Relieve  a  wench  of  hard  work  and  she 
quickly  acquires  the  brazen  swing  that  says,  "I'se  bahd." 
A  magazine  like  Godey's  may  not  help  them  much,  but  it 
is  too  epicene  to  do  anything  serious  harm.  If  it  will 
do  the  best  it  can  and  henceforth  keep  pictures  of  white 
women  out  of  its  pages,  I'll  subscribe  for  a  copy  and  com- 
pel the  negroes  on  my  ranch  to  read  it,  even  tho'  it  gives 
them  chronic  malaise  and  unfits  them  for  active  duty  in  the 
cotton  field. 


DEAN  HART  OF  DENVER. 

The  dispatches  state  that  Dean  H.  Martyn  Hart,  of  St. 
John's  Cathedral,  has  been  caught  smuggling  valuable  furs 
into  this  country  from  Canada.  I  am  not  surprised  that  he 
should  attempt  to  defraud  the  United  States,  for  he  has  ever 
been  a  blatant  and  insolent  enemy  of  the  country  from 
whose  resources  an  inscrutable  providence  permits  him  to 
fill  his  sacerdotal  paunch.  Whether  he  were  an  assisted 
immigrant  I  know  not;  but  according  to  popular  opinion 
when  he  arrived  here  from  his  beloved  England  his  um- 
bilicus was  hobnobbing  with  his  backbone.  I  am  told  that 
he  had  to  leave  his  native  land  to  find  something  to  eat, 
and  quite  naturally  he  turned  his  face  to  "the  refuge  of  the 
world's  oppressed,"  which  has  transformed  so  many  English 
paupers  into  intolerable  prigs.  A  few  rectangular  American 
meals  sufficed  to  develop  his  latest  insolence,  and  now  he  is 
fully  as  offensive  as  the  average  British  Leggar  placed  on 
horseback.  When  I  last  heard  of  this  erstwhile  hungry 
Uitlander,  now  grown  so  great  on  American  grub,  he  was 
trying  to  pull  the  leg  of  the  Colorado  people  for  a  "Victoria 
Wing"  to  St.  Luke's  Hospital — was  urging  them  to  con- 
tribute liberally  to  prove  how  glad  they  were  that  the  Queen 
is  a  respectable  old  party  instead  of  a  foul-mouthed  prosti- 
tute like  certain  of  her  predecessors.  In  his  appeal,  pub- 
lished in  the  Denver  Republican,  he  said: 

"The  world  owes  the  Queen  an  immense  debt  cff  grati- 
tude. She  has  set  an  example  of  purity  of  life  which  has 
been  an  incalculable  power  for  good  to  the  whole  society 
of  the  world.  What  might  have  been  the  condition  of  that 


442  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

society  to-day  if  the  first  lady  of  the  world  had  not  set  such 
an  example  as  has  thrust  immorality,  bribery  and  corrup- 
tion into  the  shade  of  disrepute,  who  can  tell?  *  *  Every 
miner  in  Colorado  should  not  only  perpetuate  the  memory 
of  the  good  Queen  he  has  a  right  to  be  proud  of,  but  for 
precaution's  sake,  on  his  own  account,  he  should  send  a 
subscription,"  etc.,  etc. 

England,  as  well  as  other  European  countries,  has  had 
dissolute  Queens  without  materially  affecting  the  world's 
morality.  So  far  back  as  history  sheds  its  light  the  better 
class  of  people  have  not  been  prone  to  form  their  morals  on 
royal  models ;  which  is  just  as  well,  perhaps,  as  a  majority  of 
monarchs  have  been  sexual  sinners.  As  Semiramis  and 
Messalina,  Catherine  and  Elizabeth  could  not  by  their  disso- 
lute lives  banish  from  the  world  the  blush  of  modesty ;  as  it 
withstood  the  assaults  of  the  founders  and  defenders  of  the 
Church  of  England  faith,  it  would  probably  have  survived 
had  Victoria  been  beautiful  as  Anne  Boleyn  and  passionate 
as  Cleopatra,  instead  of  homely  as  a  hedge  fence  in  her  youth 
and  phlegmatic  as  a  dead  catfish  in  her  age.  I  have  too 
much  confidence  in  womankind  to  believe  that  one  Queen, 
even  tho'  she  be  a  Helen  of  Troy  instead  of  a  gin-guzzling 
gain-grabber,  can  wreck  society  irrevocably.  Nor  can  I  see 
why  one  whose  kids  and  their  progeny  are  so  handsomely 
provided  for  at  public  expense,  and  who  receives  some  $2,- 
000,000  per  annum  for  doing  nothing,  unless  it  be  for  wri- 
ting foolish  books  which  nobody  reads,  should  be  especially 
commended  for  not  entering,  like  some  of  her  poorly  paid 
predecessors,  into  schemes  of  "bribery  and  corruption."  It 
is  dead  easy  to  be  honest  on  $2,000,000  per  annum.  As 
there  is  a  limit  to  the  universe,  there  must  be  an  ultima 
thule  even  to  a  "good  Queen's"  greed.  Of  course  the  Col- 
orado miners  have  a  perfect  "right  to  be  proud"  of  a  sov- 
ereign who  rolls  in  riches  while  millions  of  her  subjects 
are  starving;  who  donated  one-third  of  her  income  for  one< 
day  to  relieve  the  famine  sufferers  of  India,  who,  during 
her  entire  feign,  have  been  ruthlessly  robbed  for  England's 
enrichment;  who  connived  at  the  scheme  which  fastened 
the  single  gold  standard  on  America,  filling  the  land  with 
idle  men  and  reducing  thousands  of  silver  miners  to  the 
verge  of  starvation ;  but  it  is  a  "right"  that  few  of  them  will 
exercise  so  long  as  they  can  keep  out  of  the  lunatic  asylum. 
Having  in  mind  the  proverbial  thriftiness  of  John  Bull,  his 
vulpine  resourcefulness  when  there  is  a  shilling  in  sight,  I 
became  curious  to  know  something  of  the  hospital  scheme 
engineered  by  Dean  Hart,  and  whether  miners  who  gave 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  443 

up  their  scant  earnings  to  build  the  Victoria  annex  would 
be  treated  without  cost  in  case  of  accident.  The  following 
excerpt  from  a  letter  received  from  a  prominent  citizen  of 
Colorado  throws  some  light  on  the  subject,  and  incidentally 
brings  out  the  fine  points  of  this  fat-headed  fraud  who  now 
fares  sumptuously  every  day,  instead  of  lunching  as  in  auld 
lang  syne  on  the  fog  banks  of  London : 

"It  is  a  favorite  boast  of  Dean  Hart  that  he  never  reads  an 
American  newspaper.  Although  he  has  been  pastor  (or 
'dean')  of  St.  John's  Cathedral  for  a  great  many  years  he  is 
still  an  English  subject,  never  having  been  naturalized,  and 
boasts  of  it.  He  is  opposed  to  the  public  school  system 
of  this  country,  and  writes  articles  to  the  different  papers 
of  the  country,  condemning  the  system.  He  has  all  his 
clothing  imported  from  England  or  Canada.  He  invariably 
sends  his  wife  to  England  that  his  children  may  'escape  the 
obloquy  of  being  born  American  citizens/  These  facts 
are  not  mere  hearsay,  but  are  notorious.  But  to  you  they 
must  be  superfluous.  I  have  been  told  that  you  have  lec- 
tured on  the  subject  of  'Gall/  and  in  order  to  do  the  sub- 
ject justice  you  must  at  one  time  have  known  Dean  H. 
Martyn  Hart.  St.  Luke's  Hospital  is  not  by  any  means  the 
only  good  hospital  in  Denver.  'There  are  others/  It  is 
an  adjunct  (for  revenue  only)  of  St.  John's  Cathedral.  H. 
Martyn  Hart  is  grand  mogul  of  both  institutions.  Their 
charges  range  from  $12  per  week  upwards  in  advance  and 
there  is  no  deviation  from  this  rule." 

So  the  miner  who,  "for  precaution's  sake  on  his  own  ac- 
count," contributes  to  the  Victorian  Wing  of  St.  Luke's  in 
honor  of  "the  first  lady  of  the  world,"  can,  in  case  of  ac- 
cident, secure  medical  attention  in  the  same  concern  for  "$12 
per  week  and  upwards."  If  he  isn't  prepared  to  pay  two 
prices  for  treatment  that  this  Good  Samaritan  may  slip 
abundant  shekels  into  its  sock,  he  can  lie  out  in  the  street 
and  rot  so  far  as  Saint  ( ?)  Luke's  is  concerned.  The  ex- 
tensive circulation  of  the  Iconoclast  in  Colorado  leads  me 
to  hope  that  I  can  cave  in  the  skull  of  that  little  scheme — can 
prevent  the  miners  beings  buncoed  out  of  their  money.  It 
seems  to  me  that  a  man  with  sufficient  audacity  to  spring 
such  a  piece  of  disreputable  dead-beatism  would  renounce 
the  ministry  and  go  into  the  confidence  business  right — with 
Senator  Palmer  for  side-partner.  Had  the  reverend  gentle- 
man who  parts  his  name  on  the  side  like  a  lo-cent  dude  and 
dodges  customs  duties  like  a  professional  fraud,  made  a 
practice  of  reading  the  American  newspapers  instead  of  bur- 
dening his  seldom  brains  with  the  dry  rot  of  English  diurn- 


444  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

als,  he  might  have  learned  (if  capable  of  learning  anything, 
which  seems  unlikely)  that  Colorado  is  not  an  appendage 
of  the  British  crown ;  also  that  when  a  gabby  Uitlander  at- 
tacks the  educational  or  other  institutions  of  this  country 
he  runs  considerable  risk  of  getting  his  lungs  kicked  out 
by  some  self-respecting  American  citizen.  My  correspond- 
ent is  unnecessarily  exercised  because  Hart  takes  the  pre- 
caution to  have  his  brats  born  dutiful  British  subjects  instead 
of  independent  American  sovereigns.  For  that  he  cannot 
be  too  highly  commended,  for  the  sons  might  resemble 
their  soupy  sire.  The  Republican  party  conferred  American 
sovereignty  upon  the  coon;  but  a  pitying  providence  has 
prevented  the  proudest  title  known  to  human  history  being 
further  degraded  by  Dean  Hart.  I  don't  know  but  we 
should  encourage  this  humble  instrument  of  heaven's 
mercy  to  America  by  contributing  to  the  Victorian  Wing 
of  St.  Luke's  Hospital.  By  all  means  let  Hart  and  all  wor- 
shipful cattle  of  his  kind  ever  remain  the  subjects  of  rheumy 
European  royalty,  humbly  bending  their  rickety  marrow- 
bones before  the  foolish  bogey  of  the  "divine  right  of 
banal  descendants  of  certain  bumbards  and  bawds  to  misrule 
and  rob ;  for  American  citizenship  is  already  weighted  with 
all  the  "obloquy"  it  can  comfortably  carry.  We  have  got 
to  draw  the  line  somewhere  if  we  would  not  have  the  title 
of  American  sovereign  become  as  disreputable  as  that  of 
British  duke.  As  to  Victoria  being  "the  first  lady  of  the 
world"  I  have  nothing  to  say,  further  than  that  the  Kanakas 
having  conferred  the  same  high-sounding  title  on  their 
own  beloved  Lillikizooki,  the  first  ladies  aforesaid  are  wel- 
come to  settle  the  controversy  as  best  they  can.  Were  I 
selected  to  umpire  the  game  I  would  certainly  award  the 
stakes  to  Hart's  sovereign,  believing  as  I  do  that  even  an 
Anglo-Saxon  descended  from  a  brutal  and  crazy  king  must 
be  a  shade  better  than  a  saddle-colored  barbarian.  Nor  can 
I  blame  the  Englishman  for  making  a  mighty  to  do  because, 
after  so  many  centuries,  one  of  their  monarchs  has  honestly 
earned  the  right  to  be  called  respectable.  Such  unexpected 
beatitude  is  certainly  just  cause  for  rejoicing.  Here  in 
America  we  never  think  of  congratulating  ourselves  that  the 
first  lady  of  the  land  is  a  model  of  womanly  virtue ;  for  we 
have  not,  never  can  have  experience  of  any  other  kind.  In 
England  the  reverse  was  so  long  the  case  that  we  can 
readily  appreciate  John  Bull's  joy  at  finding  himself  under 
the  rule  of  a  monarch  for  whose  private  life  he  need  not 
apologize.  May  Victoria  live  long  to  reign  if  not  to  rule 
over  the  so-called  Anglo-Saxons,  and  thereby  enable  John 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  445 

Bull  to  hold  up  his  head.  As  P.  Henry  would  observe, 
"we  can  only  judge  the  future  by  the  past,"  which  argues 
that  she  is  an  oasis  of  respectability  in  a  boundless  desert 
of  royal  debauchery. 


"UNCLE  WILLIAM"  CAMERON. 

The  Apostle  takes  a  day  off  to  call  the  world's  atten- 
tion to  Col.  William  Cameron  of  Waco,  the  commercial 
Collossus,  the  Napoleon  of  finance,  the  hub  around  which 
all  great  enterprises  revolve.  In  the  lexicon  of  public 
opinion  we  find  the  following  entry :  "Col.  William  Cam- 
eron, an  up-to-date  daisy,  but  no  dude."  Having  lifted 
himself,  by  his  own  bootstraps,  out  of  the  Serbonian  bogs 
of  poverty  to  the  milliononic  plane,  it  follows  that  Col. 
William  Cameron  knows  a  thing  or  two — is  "dead  onto" 
all  the  world's  ways  that  are  dark  and  tricks  that  are 
vain.  At  least  we  were  wont  to  think  so — to  imagine  our 
Bill  sharper  than  a  serpent's  tooth,  the  very  creme  de  la 
creme  of  the  "hot  stuff."  We  were  sure  of  it  when  he  put 
back  the  gubernatorial  crown  proffered  by  the  Texas  Re- 
publicans, nailed  upl  his  smokehouse,  set  a  bear  trap  in 
the  donjon-keep  of  his  hennery  and  padlocked  both  the 
bung  and  the  spigot  of  his  "bar'l."  But  alack  and  alas ! 
Our  idol  is  broken,  our  Carian  marble  hath  proven  but 
common  clay.  We  have  worshipped  what  Old  John  Knox 
would  call  a  "pented  bredd"  those  Arabian  images  ridi- 
culed by  Mahomet,  as  "gods — a  gilded  stick — and  bowed 
us  to  the  earth  before  one  of  with  flies  on  them." 

Col.  William  Cameron — our  Bill — recently  strayed 
from  home  and  was  spotted  by  a  brace  of  gold-brick 
mountebanks  as  "a  dead  easy  mark."  They  actually 
passed  by  Col.  J.  S.  Hogg  of  the  Link  Line,  with  whom 
the  Wall  Street  financiers  have  been  having  fun,  and  se- 
lected the  representative  citizen  of  Texas'  educational 
center  as  their  huckleberry-do,  sized  him  up  as  the  sucker 
most  likely  to  fly  at  a  piece  o'  red  flannel !  It  was  the 
old,  old  story;  older  than  three-card  monte  and  the  shell 
game,  older  than  the  flim-flam  of  the  circus  ticket  seller  or 
the  bank  draft  for  'steen  thousand  dollars  worked  off  on 
the  railway  passenger  from  Posey  county.  A  guileless 
youth  with  the  flavor  of  the  untamed  West  on  his  tongue, 
and  the  secret  of  the  "Lost  Mine"  of  Cortez  and  his  Con- 
quistadores  concealed  about  his  person,  discovers  that 


446  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

Col.  Cameron  is  his  long-lost  "Uncle  William"  with  the 
strawberry  mark  on  his  left  arm  and  a  forgotten  goat- 
walk  amid  Arizona's  wilds.    Upon  the  latter  v/as  located 
the    rediscovered    El    Dorado.      Sudden    joy    sometimes 
kills ;  but,  by  exercising  great  self-control,  Col.  Cameron 
was  able  to  safely  pass  the  crisis,  even  to  wonder  inj  a 
vague    way   how    much    his    new-found    relative    wanted. 
This  appeared,   like  the  "chill  penury"  of  the  poet,  to 
freeze  the  genial  current  of  the  young  man's  soul,  and 
he  hastened  to  assure  the  man  of  millions  that  his  nevvy 
was  no  homeless  hobo  in  search  of  a  handout.    He  even 
went  so  far  as  to  doubt  their  consanguinity,  while  inci- 
dentally displaying  slugs  of  yellow  metal  which  he  had 
clipped  from  Uncle  William's  Arizona  mine.     His  Mexi- 
can body  servant  inspected  Col.  Cameron  and  declared 
him  an  interloper  and  an  alien,  possessing  no  right  or  title 
to  the  golden  treasure  protruding  itself  thro'  Arizona's 
sacred  soil.    It  looked  for  a  moment  as  tho'  Col.  Cameron 
would  be  arrested  for  an  attempt  to  swindle  himself.  The 
young  man  was  much  discouraged.    He  wept  because  he 
could  not  find  his  real  Uncle  William  and  pour  into  his 
lap  all  the  gold  of  Ophir  and  all  the  treasures  of  Ind.    He 
was  only  a  poor  illiterate  boy,  brought  up  amid  the  cruel 
cactus  and  uncertain  mescal  of  the  uncouth  West.     Per- 
haps his  companion  would  consent  to  manage  the  mine, 
to  act  as  treasurer  for  this  new  and  greater  gold  reserve ; 
or,  if  not,  he  might  be  able  to  recommend  some  good  hon- 
est man  who  would  do  so.       It  was  truly  touching,  this 
innocent  young   man   from   Arizona,   wandering  among 
wolves  like  a  blind  orphan  girl  adown  the  midnight  Bow- 
ery.    Blood  is  thicker  than  water,  and  Col.  Cameron  re- 
lented and  found  a  snug  corner  for  his  nephew  within  his 
ample  heart.    He  didn't  care  for  any  more  money  himself 
— a  man  with  a  million  or  two  never  does.     Still,  a  few 
tons  of  gold  would  be  a  handy  thing  to  have  in  the  house 
in  case  Dick  Bland  forced  the  country  to  a  silver  basis. 
The  spider  had  towed  the  fly  into  Houston  and  was  doing 
the  elegant.     Among  the  young  man's  assets  were  two 
gold  bricks,  about  the  size  of  Iowa  barns  and  assaying 
more  than  $20  to  the  ounce.     These  were  but  unconsidered 
trifles  which  he  had  brought  with  him,  thinking  he  might 
need  some  small  change.    There  v/as  oodles  of  it  down  in 
Arizona—on  Uncle  William's  ranch.     Col.  Cameron  retired 
to  the  toilet  room  of  the  Hotel  Lawlor  and  figured  out  that 
he  was  worth,  at  the  lowest  calculation,  $927,000,000,000,000. 
The  cold  perspiration  stood  out  on  his  forehead  in  half-pint 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  447 

drops.  It  would  never  do  to  throw  all  this  gold  on  the 
market  at  once — Cleveland  and  Wall  Street  would  encom- 
pass its  demonetization  on  the  plea  that  silver  was  the 
only  honest  money.  England  could  take  a  billion,  Conti- 
nental Europe  two  billions  and  America  almost  as  much  by 
calling  in  and  canceling  the  silver  certificates  and  green- 
backs; but  this  would  scarce  exhaust  the  top-crop.  What 
would  he  do  with  the  surplus?  To  turn  it  all  loose  at  once 
would  run  gold  down  to  less  than  a  dollar  a  pound — would 
kill  the  goose  that  laid  the  auriferous  egg — would  make 
mining  even  less  profitable  than  dealing  in  long-leaf  pine.. 
Happy  thought!  He  would  make  the  streets  of  Waco  the 
exact  counterpart  of  those  in  the  New  Jerusalem — would 
pave  'em  with  gold  bricks!  That  done,  he  could  get  out 
some  extra  large  slugs  with  which  to  dam  the  Brazos  and 
rebuild  the  Cotton  Palace.  He  had  always  wanted  to  do 
something  handsome  for  Waco,  and  here  was  his  oppor- 
tunity. He  would  demonstrate  the  truth  of  the  adage  that 
fact  is  stranger  than  fiction  by  double-discounting  the  long- 
range  lies  of  Marco  Polo  anent  the  golden  roofs  of  far 
Cathay.  He  remembered  having  read  in  the  Iconoclast  that 
"the  surface  of  the  earth  had  been  merely  scratched — we 
know  not  what  may  yet  be  hidden  in  its  dark  depths.  Our 
children  may  shoe  their  mules  with  yellow  metal  from 
King  Solomon's  mines."  He  remembered  how  he  had  slaved 
and  saved  for  half  a  life-time  to  pile  up  a  paltry  million  or 
two,  and  felt  sorry  for  himself.  At  this  juncture  his  nephew 
called  to  say  that  a  string  had  suddenly  been  discovered  tied 
to  the  mine,  the  thither  end  of  which  was  securely  held  by 
his  Mexican  servant.  It  would  take  a  cold  $25,000  to  turn 
their  El  Dorado  loose,  and  he  had  but  $5,ooo.  He  would 
have  to  sell  his  gold  bricks  at  a  sacrifice  to  raise  the  re- 
mainder, unless — Here  he  looked,  wistfully  at  Uncle  Will- 
iam. Yes,  he  would  fix  it;  what  was  a  miserable  $20,000, 
when  you  could  knock  it  out  of  the  mine  in  a  minute !  But 
suddenly  his  Aladdin's  lamp  began  to  smoke  and  sputter. 
He  remembered  having  heard  somewhere  that  all  is  not  gold 
that  glitters.  Uncle  William  actually  smelt  a  rat — smelt  it 
all  by  himself,  and  it  was  not  labeled  either.  He  was  taking 
dinner  with  his  nephew  in  the  hotel  dining-room  when  it 
suddenly  occurred  to  him  that  not  every  ass  wears  four 
legs.  He  fixed  a  cold,  search-warrant  gaze  on  the  young  man 
who  pretended  to  be  bone  of  his  bone  and  flesh  of  his 
flesh,  and  the  latter  wilted  like  a  white  rabbit  beneath  the 
glance  of  a  basilisk,  or  a  sweet-potato  vine  frescoed  with  a 
hoar  frost.  Uncle  William  rose,  pointed  his  soup-spoon  at 


448  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

the  cowering  wretch  and  hissed  through  his  teeth,  as  he 
once  saw  the  hero  do  in  a  play:  "You're  a  villain."  The 
iciness  of  his  tone  frapped  the  coffee  in  the  kitchen,  while 
the  mercury  dropped  thro'  the  bottom  of  the  tube.  The 
young  man  fled  and  Uncle  William  joined  in  the  chase,  his 
napkin  streaming-  on  the  breeze  like  the  white  plume  of  King 
Henry  of  Navarre.  Those  who  saw  the  race  will  not  soon 
forget  it — the  wicked  wretch  hoofing  it  up  Washington 
Avenue,  his  face  distorted  with  fear;  Uncle  William  pur- 
suing him  with  uplifted  soup-spoon  like  an  avenging  Nem- 
esis !  Surely  the  path  of  the  transgressor  is  hard. 

Uncle  William  should  come  home.  It  is  not  safe  for  him 
to  wander  about  in  this  wicked  world.  Somebody  might 
steal  him.  First  thing  we  know  he'll  purchase  the  philos- 
opher's stone  or  the  state  right  to  saw  sunbeams  up  into 
cypress  shingles.  Come  home,  Uncle  William,  before  the 
bities  get  you !  Alas !  alas !  that  the  leading  citizen  of 
Waco  should  be  humbugged  and  hoodooed  by  an  antedilu- 
vian fake  that  would  not  impose  upon  a  country  bumpkin 
from  the  Free  State  of  Van  Zandt!  Oh,  Uncle  William, 
Uncle  William,  when  the  grass  grows  green  and  the  cow- 
slip blooms  in  the  meadow  beware  of  the  omnivrous  calf. 


THE  SEVENTH  COMMANDMENT. 

A  correspondent  wants  to  know  what  I  think  of  "the 
Single  Standard  of  Morals,  which  assumes  that  tampering 
with  the  Seventh  Commandment  is  as  demoralizing  to  men 
as  to  women." 

The  single  standard  of  morals,  like  the  single  standard  of 
money,  would  be  a  magnificent  thing  were  there  at  least 
double  the  present  amount  of  raw  material  for  it  to  meas- 
ure. I  hope  to  see  the  day  when  the  libertine  will  be  rele- 
gated to  the  social  level  of  the  prostitute  where  he  logically 
belongs ;  but  we  are  not  dealing  now  with  theories,  but  with 
actual  conditions.  I  trust  that  I  may  speak  plainly  on  this 
delicate  subject  without  offending  the  unco  guid  or  giving 
the  priorient  pulpiteers  a  pain.  I  believe  the  sexes  should 
be  equally  pure — when  I  make  a  world  all  my  women  shall 
be  paragons  of  virtue,  and  all  my  men  he-virgins.  I'll  con- 
struct no  Messalinas  nor  Cleopatras,  no  Lovelaces  or  Sir 
Launcelots.  I'll  people  the  world  with  St.  Anthonys  and 
Penelopes,  Josephs  and  Rebecca  Merlindy  Johnsings.  I'll 
apply  the  soft  pedal  to  the  fierce  scream  of  passion  and  pull 
all  the  barbs  from  the  arrows  that  whiz  from  the  Love 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  449 

God's  bow.  Life  will  not  then  be  quite  so  exhilarating,  but 
it  will  be  much  better  worth  the  living.  Meantime  a  little 
spraining  of  the  Seventh  Commandment  is  by  no  means  so 
demoralizing  to  man  as  to  woman,  despite  the  frantic  pro- 
tests of  those  who  would  drag  the  millennium  in  by  the  ears 
by  forcing  upon  society,  willy  nilly,  the  single  standard  of 
morals.  Man  is  the  grosser  animal,  has  not  so  far  to  fall; 
the  shock  to  his  sensibilities  is  not  so  serious — he  is  not  so 
an  .enable  to  shame.  A  coat  of  black  paint  ruins  a  marble 
Dian,  but  has  little  appreciable  effect  on  an  iron  Hercules. 
Illicit  intercourse  is  not  so  demoralizing  to  man  as  to 
woman,  for  the  further  reason  that  it  is  not  considered  so 
great  a  crime.  An  act  is  demoralizing  or  degrading  in  pro- 
portion as  the  perpetrator  thereof  considers  it  criminal,  as 
it  lowers  his  self-respect;  and  men  regard  their  crinolinic 
peccancy  as  a  venial  fault,  while,  women  consider  such 
lapses  on  the  part  of  their  sex  as  grievous  sin;  hence  the 
lightning  of  lust  scarce  blackens  the  pillar  while  it  shatters 
the  vase.  The  moral  effect  of  an  act  is  determined  by  the 
prevailing  standard  of  ethics.  Were  polyandry  the  general 
practice,  a  woman  could  have  a  multiplicity  of  husbands 
and  be  considered  pure;  where  polygamy  is  the  rule,  a  man 
may  have  a  multitude  of  wives  and  be  regarded  as  moral. 
Ethical  codes  ever  adapt  themselves  to  conditions.  Solo- 
mon was  one  of  the  most  honorable  men  of  his  age,  but 
were  he  alive  to-day  he  would  be  branded  as  a  shameless 
lecher,  a  contumacious  criminal.  There  have  been  relig- 
ions, existing  thro'  long  ages  and  extending  over  vast  em- 
pires, in  which  the  organs  of  generation  were  considered 
as  sacred  symbols  and  prostitution  in  the  purlieus  of  the 
temple  regarded  as  pleasing  to  the  gods.  It  is  easy  enough 
for  bigoted  ignorance  to  brand  those  people  as  barbarians ; 
but  in  many  provinces  of  art  and  science  they  have  ever 
remained  our  masters.  'The  tents  of  the  maidens"  were 
sin. ply  places  where  fair  religious  enthusiasts  sold  them- 
selves to  the  first  stranger  who  offered  them  a  piece  of  silver, 
and  laid  their  gains  upon  the  altar  of  the  gods.  The  robber 
barons  of  old-time  Germany,  the  diplomatic  liars  of  media- 
eval Italy,  the  thieves  of  ancient  Lacadaemon  and  the  po- 
lygamists  of  Biblical  Palestine  considered  themselves  as  re- 
spectable people,  and  as  they  were  so  regarded  by  their  com- 
patriots, they  were  not  morally  degraded  by  their  deeds. 
But  the  robber  and  the  liar,  the  thief  and  the  polygamist  of 
this  age  are  cattle  of  quite  another  color — there  has  been  a 
radical  change  in  the  moral  code,  the  peccadillos  of  the 
past  have  become  the  crimes  of  the  present.  The  cross, 


450  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

once  an  obscene  pagan  symbol,  has  been  transformed  from 
an  emblem  of  reproduction  into  one  of  destruction;  the 
"tents  of  the  maidens"  are  struck;  Corinth  no>  longer  im- 
plores the  gods  to  increase  the  number  and  enhance  the 
beauty  of  its  courtesans;  Venus  Pandemos  has  given  place 
to  Our  Lady  of  Pain,  and  the  obscene  Dionysius  fled  before 
a  crucified  Christ.  No  more  does  the  fair  religious  postu- 
lant play  the  bacchante  in  flower-strewn-  palaces  while  naked 
Cupids  crown  the  brimming  cup  and  sandalled  feet  beat 
time  on  polished  cedar  floors  to  music  that  is  the  cry  of 
brute  passion  in  the  blood — kneeling-  in  the  cold  grej  dawn 
upon  the  stones  she  clasps  a  marble  cross.  The  wanton 
worship  of  the  flesh  has  passed  with  the  world's  youth;  but 
tho'  much  of  man's  crassness  has  been  purged  away  in 
Time's  great  crucible,  he  is  still  of  the  earth  earthly  and 
clings  tenaciously  to  his  ancient  prerogative  of  polygamy. 
When  he  marries,  society  does  not  really  expect  him  to 
respect  his  oath  to  ''forsake  all  others" — regards  it  as  a  for- 
mal bow  to  the  convenances,  a  promise  with  a  mental 
reservation  annex;  but  it  considers  a  woman's  vow  as  sacred 
and  the  breaking  thereof  as  rankest  blasphemy.  He  is 
allowed  but  one  wife,  but  he  may  have  a  score  of  mistresses 
and  society  will  placidly  wink  the  other  eye — until  some 
tearful  maiden  requires  him  to  share  the  shame  she  can  no 
longer  conceal  or  an  "injured  husband"  goes  a  gunning. 
This  should  not  be  so,  but  so  it  is.  There  be  fools,  both 
male  and  female,  who  will  rise  up  to  exclaim  that  this  is 
false;  but  that  it  is  Gospel  truth  is  proven  every  day  in  the 
year  in  every  community  on  the  American  continent.  Men 
with  reputations  for  licentiousness  that  would  shame  old 
Silenus  are  cordially  received  in  the  most  exclusive  society. 
They  are  found  at  every  high-falutin'  "function,"  bending 
over  the  white  hands  of  the  most  accomplished  ladies  in 
the  land ;  on  every  ballroom  floor,  encircling  the  waists  of 
debutantes:  in  the  parlors  of  our  best,  people,  paying  court 
to  their  young  daughters.  The  noblest  women  in  this  world 
become  their  wives — fondly  undertake  their  "reformation" 
while  indignantly  drawing  their  skirts  aside  lest  they  come 
in  contact  with  the  tawdry  finery  of  females  whom  these 
lawless  satyrs  have  debauched.  Of  course  when  a  woman 
learns  that  her  reformatory  work  has  proven  a  failure,  drear 
and  dismal,  she  complains  bitterly,  may  even  demand  a 
divorce;  yet  she  could  count  upon  the  fingers  of  one  hand 
the  hubbies  whom  she  would  trust  behind  a  sheet  of  paper 
with  a  wayward  daughter.  She  doesn't  believe  a  little  bit 
in  the  virtue  of  the  genus  male,  yet  insists  that  her  own  hus- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  451 

band  be  a  saint — assumes  that  her  own  charms  should  cause 
him  to  regard  all  other  women  with  indifference,  and  when 
she  learns  of  his  polygamous  practices  suffers  all  the  pangs 
of  wounded  pride. 

If  a  woman  be  homely  as  a  bo  is  d'arc  hedge  she  may  sup- 
pose the  world  supercharged  with  St.  Anthonys,  for  she  has 
not  been  much  sought ;  but  if  she  be  beautiful  and  has 
mingled  much  with  men  she  realizes  all  too  well  that  the 
story  of  Joseph  is  a  foolish  romance  or  that  Mrs.  Potiphar 
was  quite  passe.  And  tho'  she  be  pure  as  a  vestal  virgin 
of  Rome's  best  days  she  secretly  despises  the  man  with 
whom  she  does  not  have  to  stand  just  a  little  bit  on  the  de- 
fensive. Of  course  she  demands  that  her  male  acquain- 
tances shall  be  gentlemen  and  treat  her  with  due  courtesy 
and  respect;  but  it  nettles  her  not  a  little  to  learn  that  her 
charms  are  altogether  ignored.  She  likes  to  feel  her  power, 
to  know  that  she  is  good  in  the  eyes  of  men,  something 
desired — that  her  virtue  is  a  priceless  jewel  over  which  she 
must  ever  keep  close  guard;  hence  she  likes  best  the  male 
she  is  compelled  to  watch,  while  a  man  has  absolutely  no 
use  for  wife  or  mistress  upon  whose  fealty  he  would  not  lay 
his  life.  The  result  is  that  when  a  woman  commits  one 
sexual  sin  she  puts  hope  behind  her,  her  feet  take  hold  on 
hell,  she  sinks  lower  and  lower  until  she  becomes  the  shame- 
less associate  of  bummers  and  bawds.  She  is  made  to  feel 
that  she  has  murdered  her  womanhood,  that  the  red  cross 
of  Cain  blazes  upon  her  brow.  Realizing  that  she  is  a  social 
outcast,  a  moral  pariah,  she  becomes  reckless,  defiant,  and 
finally  glories  in  betraying  the  fool  who  trusts  her.  No 
matter  how  fair  the  mountain  upon  which  she  has  leave  to 
feed,  she  will  batten  on  the  moor.  Love  was  her  excuse 
when  first  she  went  astray,  and  she  hugs  the  delusion  to  her 
heart  that  Cupid  can  sanctify  a  crime;  but  where  honor 
spreads  not  its  wings  of  snow  love  perishes  in  the  fierce 
simoon  of  lust.  The  man  with  whom  she  enters  the  prim- 
rose path  feels  that  he  is  good  as  his  fellows.  He  may  watch 
with  a  sigh  her  descent  to  the  noisome  regions  of  the 
damned;  but  comforts  himself  with  the  reflection  that  she 
would  have  found  her  way  to  hades  without  his  help — that 

"Virtue  as  it  never  will  be  moved, 
Though  lewdness  court  it  in  a  shape  of  heaven, 
So  lust,  though  to  a  radiant  angel  linked, 
Will  sate  itself  in  a  celestial  bed, 
And  prey  on  garbage" — • 

that  had  he  played  the  prude  she  would  have  found  another 
.and  perhaps  a  baser  paramour.  He  knows  that  the  stain 


452  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

of  lechery  is  on  his  soul  but  draws  comfort  from  the  fact 
that  such  is  the  common  heritage  of  his  sex,  forgets  his 
victim  and  struggles  toward  the  stars.  He  is  financially 
honest,  generous,  and  guards  the  honor  of  wife  and  daugh- 
ters as  God's  best  gift.  His  amorous  dalliance  with  others 
instead  of  weaning  him  from  his  wife,  causes  him  to  regard 
her  with  greater  veneration,  to  contrast  her  purity  with  his 
own  pollution,  her  virtue  with  another's  vice.  Paradoxical 
as  it  may  appear,  there  are  no  men  in  this  world  who  so  rev- 
erence good  women  as  those  who  are  notorious  for  their 
illicit  amours.  I  am  not,  of  course,  speaking  of  the  consorts 
of  common  courtesans,  of  human  hogs ;  but  of  the  men  who 
people  the  red-light  district  with  their  cast-off  mistresses. 

Pitiful  as  it  may  appear,  it  hurts  a  man  more  to  trifle 
with  the  Eighth  Commandment  once  than  to  break  the 
Seventh  a  thousand  times — he  is  worse  demoralized  by  steal- 
ing a  mangy  mule  than  by  ruining  a  maid.  The  male  lecher 
may  be  in  all  things  else  a  lord ;  the  thief  is  considered  alto- 
gether and  irremediably  corrupt.  Society  will  tolerate  the 
one  if  his  offense  be  not  too  flagrant,  but  to  the  other  it 
refuses  even  the  shadow  of  forgiveness.  For  three  cen- 
turies the  world  has  been  trying  to  explain  away  Shakes- 
peare's poaching,  but  has  not  thought  it  worth  while  to  even 
apologize  for  his  sexual  perversity.  Washington  caught  his 
death  while  keeping  an  assignation  with  a  neighbor's  wife ; 
but  there's  little  said  about  it — he's  still  the  "father  of  his 
country,"  including  70  million  people  of  all  classes  and 
colors.  Had  the  "slight  exposure  which  brought  on  a  fatal 
sickness,"  been  the  result  of  prowling  in  his  neighbor's  barn 
instead  of  his  boudoir  his  name  would  be  anathema  forever- 
more.  The  world  forgives  him  for  debauching  another 
man's  wife,  but  would  never  have  forgiven  him  had  he  raided 
the  same  man's  henroost.  It  does  not  mean  by  this  that 
a  scrawny  pullet  is  of  more  importance  than  family  honor; 
it  simply  means  that  the  man  who  steals  a  pullet  is  a  cow- 
ardly thief,  while  the  one  who  ignores  the  advances  of  a 
pretty  woman  is  an  incorrigible  idiot.  Ben  Franklin  could 
have  mistresses  scattered  all  over  the  City  of  Brotherly  Love, 
and  Dan  Webster  consort  with  all  the  light  women  of  W^ash- 
ington,  and  still  be  men  of  genius  beneath  whose  imperial 
feet  Columbia  was  proud  to  lay  her  shining  hair;  but  had 
either  been  caught  sneaking  from  a  neighbor's  woodpile  with 
a  two-cent  bundle  of  faggots,  the  world  would  have  rung 
with  his  infamy.  The  complaint  against  Demosthenes  is  not 
that  he  was  a  libertine — a  man  before  whose  honeyed  elo- 
quence maiden  modesty  and  wifely  virtue  were  as  wax ;  but 
that  he  threw  away  sword  and  shield  and  fled  like  a  mule- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  453 

eared  rabbit  before  the  spears  of  Macedon.  I  digress  long 
enough  to  say  that  I  have  patiently  investigated  the  story 
of  the  great  orator's  flight,  and  am  fully  convinced  that  it 
was  a  foul  political  falsehood,  just  as  the  current  story  of 
Col.  Ingersoll's  cowardice  and  capture  is  a  religious  lie. 

Of  course  society  has  to  make  an  occasional  example,  and 
its  moral  malefience,  like  death,  loves  a  shining  mark.  It 
damned  Breckenridge  for  getting  tangled  up  with  a  desiring 
maid  in  a  closed  carriage,  and  relegated  him  to  the  political 
wilderness,  yet  twice  elevated  to  the  presidency  the  most 
disreputable  old  Falstaff  that  ever  vibrated  between  cheap 
beer  joints  and  ham-fatted  old  washerwomen  who  smelled 
of  stale  soap-suds  and  undeodorized  diapers.  Cleveland 
"told  the  truth" — when  he  had  to — and  was  made  a  little  tin 
Jesus  of  by  the  moral  jabberwocks;  Breckenridge,  an  in- 
finitely better  and  brainier  man,  'fessed  up — and  couldn't  go 
to  Congress  from  the  studhorse  district  of  Kentucky. 
When  society  goes  hunting  for  scapegoats  it  usually  manages 
to  get  a  gnat  lodged  in  its  esophagus  while  relegating  a 
mangy  dromedary  to  its  internal  economy. 

Such  are  the  conditions  which  prevail  to-day ;  but  I  am  far 
from  agreeing  with  the  dictum  of  Pope  that  "whatever  is,  is 
right."  Had  the  world  ever  proceeded  on  that  principle  we 
would  still  be  honoring  robbers  and  liars,  thieves  and  polyg- 
amists.  The  wider  license  accorded  man  harmonizes  neither 
with  divine  law,  decency,  nor  the  canons  of  common  sense. 
We  place  womanly  virtue  on  a  pedestal  and  worship  it  while 
tacitly  encouraging  men  to  destroy  it.  We  overlook  the  fact 
that  a  man  cannot  fracture  the  Seventh  Commandment  with- 
out considerable  assistance.  We  should  adopt  a  loftier 
standard  of  morality,  nobler  ideals  for  men.  Because  he  is 
more  earthy  than  woman  it  does  not  follow  that  he  should 
be  made  altogether  of  muck.  He  has  made  some  little  prog- 
ress since  the  days  of  Judah  and  Tamar,  David  and  Bath- 
sheba.  He  no  longer  consorts  with  courtesans  on  the  public 
highway,  nor  pens  up  half  a  hundred  wives  in  a  harem,  then 
goes  broke  buying  concubines.  He  has  learned  that  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  shame,  assumes  a  virtue  tho'  he  has  it  not, 
seeks  to  conceal  his  concupiscence.  What  in  one  age  society 
drives  to  a  semblance  of  concealment  in  the  next  it  brands 
as  criminal,  hence  we  may  hope  that  at  no  distant  day  the 
single  standard  of  morals  will  become  more  than  an  irri- 
descent  dream — that  Josephs  will  not  be  confined  altogether 
to  gum-chewing  members  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  We  may 
eventually  reach  that  moral  plane  where  the  male  debauchee 
will  be  considered  a  moral  outcast ;  but  the  time  is  not  yet, 


454  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

and  until  its  advent  illicit  commerce  will  continue  to  be  more 
demoralizing  to  women  than  to  men. 

Of  course  there  are  exceptions  to  the  rule — there  are 
women  who  rise  superior  to  the  social  law.  George  Eliot, 
Queen  Elizabeth,  Sara  Bernhardt  and  others  have  trampled 
the  social  edict  beneath  their  feet  and  refused  to  consider 
themselves  sinners — have  laughed  an  outraged  world  to 
scorn  and  stood  defiant,  sufficient  unto  themselves.  Those 
women  were  intellectual  amazons  whom  naught  but  the 
writhen  bolts  of  God  could  humble,  whose  genius  flamed 
with  a  white  light  even  through  the  dun  clouds  of  lechery ; 
but  we  cannot  measure  the  workaday  woman  by  the  few 
"whose  minds  might,  like  the  elements,  furnish  forth  crea- 
tion/' A  Bernhardt  is  great,  not  because  of  her  social  sin, 
but  despite  thereof.  With  her  art  in  the  all-in-all,  sex  but 
an  incident.  She  is  strong  enough  to  mount  the  empyrean 
despite  the  lernean  serpent-coil  which  drags  others  to  per- 
dition— to  compel  the  world  to  tolerate  if  not  forgive  the 
black  stain  in  her  heart  because  of  the  divine  radiance  which 
encircles  her  head.  Occasionally  there  is  a  woman  who  can 
sacrifice  her  purity  without  sinking  to  the  slums  through  loss 
of  self-respect — can  still  maintain  the  fierce  battle  for  fame, 
can  be  grand  after  she  has  ceased  to  be  good.  Mrs.  Grundy 
can  rave,  and  every  orthodox  goose  stretch  forth  its  rubber- 
neck to  express  its  disapproval;  but  instead  of  bending 
beneath  the  weight  of  scorn,  instead  of  sinking  into  the  mire 
of  the  slough  upon  which  she  has  set  her  feet  she  seems  like 
old  Antaeus,  to  gather  fresh  strength  from  the  earth  with 
which  to  write  her  name  among  the  immortals.  Queen 
Elizabeth  is  to  this  good  day  the  pride  of  orthodox  England 
— she  had  more  brains  than  all  its  other  monarchs  combined  ; 
yet  by  solemn  act  of  parliament  it  was  decreed  that  the  first 
bastard  born  to  the  "Virgin  Queen"  should  ascend  the  throne 
of  Britain.  Titus  was  the  highest  possible  premium  placed 
upon  female  lechery,  and  it  was  placed  there  after  due  delib- 
eration by  a  "God-fearing,"  Catholic-hating  Episcopalian 
parliament !  Fortunately  for  Mrs.  Wettin,  the  present  gov- 
ernmental figure-head,  jolly  old  Liz  either  availed  herself 
of  some  of  the  "preventatives"  so  extensively  advertised  in 
"great  family  newspapers,"  or  neglected  to  own  her  illegiti- 
mate offspring.  I  cannot  help  but  think  that  a  love-child  by 
Elizabeth  and  the  courtly  Raleigh  would  have  been  a  great 
improvement  on  any  of  the  soggy-headed  things  spawned  by 
the  House  of  Hanover.  I  do  not  apologize  for  nor  condone 
the  sexual  frailties  of  distinguished  females ;  the  noblest  ca- 
reer to  which  any  woman  can  aspire  is  that  of  honest  wife- 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  455 

hood,  and  if  she  attains  to  that  she  is,  tho'  of  mediocre  mind, 
infinitely  superior  to  the  most  famous  wanton. 

It  is  worthy  of  remark  that  most  distinguished  women 
since  the  days  of  Sappho  and  Semiramis  have  been  impure, 
while  not  a  few  great  men  have  been  remarkable  for  their 
continency.  Woman  has  been  called  "the  weaker  vessel,'"' 
and  certam  it  is  that  men  stand  the  glamor  of  greatness, 
the  temptations  that  come  with  riches,  the  white  light  that 
beats  upon  a  throne,  much  better  than  do  Eve's  fair  daugh- 
ters. As  a  man  becomes  great,  he  respects  more  and  more 
the  cumulative  wisdom  of  the  world,  becomes  obedient;  as 
a  woman  becomes  great  she  grows  disdainful  and  rebellious. 
Thus  it  is  that  while  in  the  common  walks  of  life  woman 
is  infinitely  purer  than  man,  as  we  ascend  into  the  higher 
realms,  whether  in  art,  letters  or  statecraft,  we  discover  a 
tendency  to  reverse  this  law  until  we  often  find  great  men 
anchorites  and  great  women  trampling  on  the  moral  code. 

There  be  some  who  explain  man's  larger  sexual  liberty 
on  physiological  grounds,  excuse  it  on  the  hypothesis  of 
necessity.  Physicians  of  the  ultra-progressive  school  have 
even  gone  so  far  as  to  assert  that  continence  in  man  is  the 
chief  cause  of  impotency — have  pointed  out  that  it  is  usu- 
ally the  wives  of  good  men  who  go  wrong,  and  insisted  that 
to  the  former  hypothesis  must  be  attributed  the  latter  fact. 
I  am  unable  to  find  any  reason  in  physiology  why  such  a  rule 
should  not  work  both  ways.  I  have  said  somewhere  that 
man  is  naturally  polygamous,  and  I  might  have  added  with 
equal  truth  that  woman  is  naturally  polyandrous.  The  dif- 
ference is  that  woman's  sexual  education  began  earlier  and 
she  has  progressed  somewhat  further  from  "a  state  of 
nature"  wherein  free  love  is  the  law.  Man  early  began  to 
defend  his  prerogatives,  to  strengthen  the  moral  concept  of 
his  mate  with  a  club,  to  frame  laws  for  the  protection  of  His 
female  property.  The  infraction  of  established  custom  soon 
came  to  be  considered  a  social  crime,  an  offense  of  which 
even  the  gods  took  cognizance.  Woman's  polyandrous 
instinct  yielded  somewhat  to  education — she  was  com- 
pelled to  make  this  sacrifice  upon  the  altar  of  society.  Thus 
was  female  continence  not  a  thing  decreed  by  heaven  or 
"natural  law,"  but  was  begotten  of  brute  force.  We  see  a 
survival  of  the  old  animalistic  instinct  in  prostitution  and 
the  all  too  frequent  illicit  intercourse  prevailing  in  the  higher 
walks  of  life.  Unquestionably  the  Seventh  Commandment 
is  violative  of  natural  law  as  applied  to  either  sex ;  but  most 
natural  laws  must  be  amended  somewhat  ere  we  can  have 
even  a  semblance  of  civilization;  hence  we  cannot  excuse 


456  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

man's  peccadillos  on  that  broad  plea  that  it's  "the  nature  of 
the  brute."  Joseph  and  St.  Anthony,  Gautama  and  Sir 
Galahad  are  ideals  toward  which  man  must  ever  strive  with 
all  his  strength  if  he  would  purge  the  sub-soil  out  of  his 
system — would  mount  above  the  gutter  where  wallows  the 
dumb  beasts  and  take  his  place  among  the  gods.  The  cus- 
tom of  thousands  of  years  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding, 
it  is  damnable  that  a  wife  should  be  compelled  to  share  a 
husband's  caresses  with  lewd  women.  Tennyson  assures  us 
that  "as  the  husband  is  the  wife  is."  Fortunately  for  society 
this  is  false;  still  there  are  thorns  in  the  bed  and  rebellion 
in  the  heart  of  the  woman  who  must  play  wife  to  a  Love- 
lace or  a  Lancelot-.  It  is  not  true  that  it  is  the  wives  of  good 
men  who  go  astray;  it  is  the  wives  who  are  naturally  cor- 
rupt or  morally  weak.  A  talented  lady  contributor  to  the 
Iconoclast  once  asserted  that  'tis  not  for  good  women  that 
men  have  done  great  deeds.  Perchance  this  is  true,  for  men 
who  do  great  deeds  are  goaded  thereto,  not  by  the  swish  of 
crinoline,  but  by  the  immortal  gods.  Such  acts  are  bred  in 
the  bone,  are  born  in  the  blood  and  brain.  It  certainly  is  not 
for  bad  women  that  men  soar  at  the  sun,  for  every  man 
worth  the  killing  despises  corruption  in  womankind.  He 
wor ships  on  bended  knee  and  with  uncovered  head  at  the 
shrines  of  Minerva  and  Dian,  and  but  amuses  himself  by 
stealth  at  that  of  the  Pandemian  Venus.  When  Anthony 
deserted  his  Roman  wife  for  Egypt's  sensuous  Queen,  he 
quickly  became  an  inervated  ass  and  his  name  thenceforth 
was  Ichabod.  Great  Caesar  dallied  with  the  same  dusky 
wanton,  but  ever  in  his  intrepid  heart  ruled  that  "woman 
above  reproach."  Alexander  of  Macedon  refrained  from 
making  the  wife  of  Persia's  conquered  King  his  mistress. 
Napoleon  found  time  even  among  the  thunders  of  war  to 
write  daily  to  his  wife,  and  when  he  finally  turned  from  her 
it  was  not  to  seek  a  fairer  flame  but  to  place  a  son  upon  the 
throne  of  France.  Grant  stood  forth  in  an  era  of  unbridled 
license  unsullied  as  a  god.  Great  men  have  been  unfaithful 
to  their  marital  vows,  but  it  has  been  those  of  mediocre 
minds  and  india  rubber  morals  who  have  cowered  at  the  feet 
of  mistresses — who  have  thrown  their  world  away  for  reechy 
kisses  shared  by  others.  While  it  is  true  that  the  world's 
intellectual  titans  have  seldom  been  he-virgins  or  feathered 
saints,  they  did  not  draw  god-like  inspiration  from  their 
own  dishonor. 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  457 


"QUO  VADIS." 

Yes,  I've  read  it — and  when  I  had  finished  the  miserable 
thing  my  head  felt  as  tho'  full  of  wind  and  dishwater.  A 
critic  is  compelled  to  read  every  book  of  which  a  foolish 
public  makes  a  fad,  and  in  this  era  of  decadent  literature 
and  depraved  taste,  the  task  is  usually  equivalent  to  wad- 
ing- thro'  a  miasmic  sewer  or  hoofing  it  over  an  un- 
profitable Sahara.  If  a  book  is  only  bad  enough  it  is  sure 
of  popular  success.  And  "Quo  Vadis"  is  the  worst  of  all 
the  irremediable  tommyrot  over  which  an  undiscriminating 
public  has  raved.  It  does  not  even  possess  the  doubtful 
charm  of  artistic  immorality — it  sinks  even  below  the  usual 
level  of  insufferable  imbecility.  Where  it  is  not  morally  cor- 
rupt and  bestially  bad,  it  is  either  puerile  or  blasphemous. 
"Quo  Vadis"  is  the  mental  moon-calf,  a  chaotic  ollapodrida 
composed  of  the  intellectual  fag-ends  of  the  universe.  To 
the  normal  mind  it  is  neither  entertaining  nor  instructive.  It 
is  a  conglomeration  of  meaningless  words,  a  concatenation 
of  absurdities,  a  cataclysm  of  nescience  and  nonsense.  It 
should  have  been  subjected  to  the  blue-pencil  of  the  snake- 
editor — then  burned.  The  story,  which  occupies  more  than 
500  dreary  pages,  could  have  been  better  told  in  a  dozen 
newspaper  columns.  It  is  a  lingering  agony  long  drawn 
out.  It  is  just  such  a  book  as  I  would  expect  a  Texas  editor 
to  write  while  enjoying  an  attack  of  delirium-tremens. 
Reading  it  were  like  seining  the  Atlantic  ocean  to  find  a 
bull-frog,  or  fishing  in  one  of  Talmage's  idiotic  sermons  for 
a  nascent  idea.  The  author  is  a  Polander  with  the  construc- 
tive ability  of  a  candle-maker  and  the  lawless  imagination 
of  a  pack-peddler.  He  calls  himself  Henryk  Sienkiewicz. 
That's  the  way  he  spells  it — when  he  wants  to  pronounce  it 
he  fills  his  mouth  with  hot  mush,  then  turns  a  series  of  som- 
ersaults. The  translation  is  by  Jeremiah  Curtin,  who  hid 
from  the  police  in  the  Guatemalan  wilds  while  perpetrating 
his  crime  against  the  English-reading  world.  Mr.  Henryk 
Sienkiewicz  is  an  innocent  looking  party,  altho'  "Quo  Vadis" 
is  not  his  first  offense.  His  head  resembles  a  long  green 
Georgia  watermelon  that  had  been  several  times  "plugged," 
but  being  unripe  had  not  been  pulled.  His  characters  are 
all  automatons — you  see  the  strings  and  hear  the  creaking 
of  the  pulleys  as  they  proceed  to  cut  fantastic  capers  before 
high  heaven.  You  no  more  expect  to  meet  one  of  them  on 
the  street  than  to  see  a  wooden  Indian  in  front  of  a  tobacco 
store  hit  somebody  in  the  head  with  his  tomahawk.  When 


458  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

you  read  the  last  chapter  you  expect  to  see  the  author  take 
off  their  legs,  unscrew  their  heads  and  put  them  away  in  a 
box  with  grease  paints. 

"Quo  Vadis"  is  the  alleged  "narrative  of  the  time  of 
Nero,"  but  the  author  evidently  expended  little  time  or 
labor  acquainting  himself  with  the  people  among  whom  his 
scenes  are  laid.  He  reminds  me  of  that  Dutch  philosopher 
who,  having  never  seen  a  lion,  attempted  to  evolve  a  correct 
idea  of  one  from  his  inner  consciousness,  and  produced 
a  mongrel  cross  between  a  hippogriff  and  a  nightmare.  His 
Nero  resembles  the  erstwhile  emperor  about  as  much  as 
Cataline  does  Chollie  Boy  Culberson,  while  his  early  Chris- 
tians remind  me  of  a  Populist  convention  in  Kansas.  About 
all  that  the  author  has  learned  of  ancient  Rome  is  the  names 
of  the  streets  and  the  rooms  in  bathhouse  and  residence 
and  these  he  repeats  with  the  tiresome  industry  of  a  pedant, 
or  the  exasperating  persistence  of  a  poll  parrot.  I  had  to 
hire  a  nigger  to  swab  me  off  with  a  wet  towel  while  I  read 
the  work,  and  all  I  got  out  of  it  was  a  joblot  of  misinforma- 
tion and  a  feverish  desire  to  plug  Mr.  Henryk  Sienkiewhat- 
sky's  Georgia  watermelon  in  a  new  place.  His  plot  consists 
of  getting  his  heroine  into  one  trouble  after  another,  and 
the  futile  efforts  of  the  hero  to  get  her  out  by  means  of  the 
double  pull  of  prayer  to  God  and  perquisites  to  the  preto- 
rian  guards.  He  does  not,  however,  imitate  that  American 
humorist  who  undertook  to  write  a  society  novel,  and  after 
getting  his  herone  enciente  and  his  hero  in  jail,  gave  them 
up  as  hopeless.  There  are  some  rather  pretty  things  in  the 
book,  but  they  are  spoiled  by  too  much  elaboration;  some 
really  dramatic  scenes,  but  they  are  ruined  by  being  made 
to  last  too  long.  When  the  author  gets  hold  of  a  good  thing 
he  cannot  let  go.  Mr.  Sienkiewhatsky  has  undertaken  to 
write  a  great  religio-historico-romantico  novel,  but  has  only 
succeeded  in  making  himself  an  insufferable  nuisance.  He 
makes  Roman  history  just  as  Mark  Twain's  sea  captain 
did  that  of  the  civil  war — to  suit  himself.  He  supplies  Sts. 
Peter  and  Paul  with  sermons  and  sayings,  and  pulls  them 
about  as  unceremoniously  as  he  does  the  rest  of  his  puppets. 
From  first  to  last  he  caters  to  the  religious  element,  and 
succeeds  in  capturing  that  portion  of  it  which  cannot  distin- 
guish between  Jesus  Christ  and  Sam  Jones.  He  evidently 
means  no  offense  in  picturing  the  early  Christians  as  an  un- 
happy cross  between  fanatics  and  fools,  and  making  St. 
Peter  neglect  his  holy  calling  to  officiate  as  guardian  angel 
of  an  affaire  d'amour.  Christians  believe  that  the  Apostle 
were  inspired  men,  that  their  words  were  those  given  them 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  459 

by  the  Almighty.  The  author  of  "Quo  Vadis"  professes 
this  faith,  yet  puts  his  own  words  into  the  mouths  of  Sts. 
Peter  and  Paul — presumes  to  think  and  speak  for  Omnipo- 
tence himself.  He  might  as  well  have  introduced  into  his 
narrative  God  and  the  Holy  Ghost.  My  bump  of  reverence 
is  not  so  large  as  to  be  abnormal;  but  I  do  insist  that  if 
Christ  and  the  Apostles  were  what  the  church  believes  them 
to  be  it  is  blasphemy  for  any  man  to  attribute  to  them  one 
word  not  duly  authenticated — that  when  a  novelist  makes 
them  parrot  his  own  nonsense  he  deserves  the  rebuke  of  the 
church  instead  of  its  patronage. 

Petronius  is  the  only  character  in  the  book  who  gives 
evidence  of  being  half-way  alive,  and  we  look  on  incredu- 
lously while  he  bleeds  to  death,  declining  to  believe  that  he 
really  possesses  blood.  He  is  Nero's  favorite,  an  elegant 
Epicurean,  a  dilettante,  a  poetaster,  talented,  lazy,  auda- 
cious, willing  to  bend  the  pregnant  hinges  of  the  knee  where 
thrift  may  follow  fawning,  yet  not  hopelessly  corrupt.  He 
fattens  on  Nero  and  flatters  him  thro'  many  a  long  year,  then 
insults  him  when  he  falls  from  favor,  and  goes  hence  in 
the  arms  of  a  beautiful  concubine,  dies  to  the  sound  of  sen- 
suous music  at  his  own  banquet  board.  He  is  the  only  char- 
acter in  the  book  gifted  with  an  ounce  of  brains,  and  he  de- 
nies all  the  gods,  lives  and  dies  an  Atheist,  mocks  both 
Jehovah  and  Jove,  laughs  at  Christ  and  the  Christians. 
Vinicius,  his  nephew,  is  a  military  tribune  in  love  with 
Lygia.  He  is  a  big,  powerful  fellow.  He  quarrels  with  his 
effete  uncle,  and  the  latter,  a  slender  man,  enervated  by  wine 
and  women,  takes  both  the  warrior's  brawny  hands  in  one 
of  his  and  holds  them  until  he  cools  off — Ward  McAllister 
conquering  Sandow!  Lygia  is  a  Christian  maid,  a  frail, 
spirituelle  little  thing — simply  "a  rag  and  a  bone  and  a  hank 
of  hair" — yet  Vinicius,  at  whose  feet  are  the  most  volup- 
tuous women*  of  Rome,  including  the  female  favorite  of 
Nero,  conceives  for  her  an  unholy  passion  and  determines 
to  make  her  his  mistress.  She  flies  from  him,  and  he  at- 
tempts to  seize  her  and  drag  her  to  his  house  by  force,  and 
because  she  eludes  him  he  wants  her  flogged!  Not  very 
promising  material  out  of  which  to  manufacture  a  hero! 
He  finds  her  listening  to  a  sermon  by  St.  Peter,  the  great 
Apostle  converts  him  to  the  true  faith,  and  his  unholy  pas- 
sion is  transmitted  into  pure  love  by  religion's  great  alembic. 
St.  Peter  promises  her  to  him,  but  Nero  concludes  to  have 
her  ravished,  even  tho'  he  has  to  attend  to  that  little  formal- 
ity himself,  then  feed  her  to  the  lions,  and  for  about  three 
hundred  dreary  pages  there's  hades  to  pay  and  no  pitch  hot. 


460  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

Vinicius  has  access  to  Nero,  and  is  aware  of  the  terrible 
doom  of  his  lady  love,  yet  makes  no  attempt  to  avenge  her 
by  slipping  an  Arkansaw  toothpick  into  the  brisket  of  the 
royal  brute.  He  even  goes  to  the  circus  to  see  her  destroyed 
and  sits  on  a  bench  and  moans ;  but  a  barbarian  saves  her 
life  by  taking  a  monster  bull  by  the  horns  and  pulling  its 
head  off — thereby  proving  that  the  age  of  miracles  was  not 
yet  past.  The  hero,  who  had  not  the  courage  to  go  to  his 
fiancee's  defense  and  save  her  or  die  with  her,  enters  the 
arena  when  the  danger  is  past  and  solemnly  covers  her 
nakedness  with  his  pocket  handkerchief.  And  Lygia  mar- 
ries Vinicius  instead  of  the  barbarian  who  killed  the  bull. 
But  she  wasn't  much  of  a  heroine  anyhow.  Lygia  is  a  cant- 
ing little  Goody  Two-Shoes  without  a  pint  of  rich  blood  in 
her  whole  body,  while  Vinicius  is  an  ecstatic  chump,  much 
better  qualified  to  engineer  a  holiness  campmeeting  than 
guard  a  woman's  honor  or  promote  his  country's  glory. 
With  power  to  slay  herself,  Lygia  goes  to  Nero's  banquet, 
fully  expecting  to  be  debauched.  She  suffers  the  pretorians 
to  throw  her  into  a  foul  prison,  expecting  that  before  death 
she  will  be  defiled.  Eunice  the  pagan  mistress  of  the  god- 
less Petronius,  realizing  that  the  hour  has  struck,  that  she 
must  choose  between  death  and  becoming  the  creature  of  a 
man  she  does  not  love,  stretches  forth  her  arm  to  the  Greek 
physician's  steel,  the  blood  spurts  and  she  sinks  dying  upon 
the  bosom  of  her  lord — "her  honor  rooted  in  dishonor 
stands  and  faith  unfaithful  keeps  her  falsely  true." 

In  the  burning  of  Rome  the  author  of  "Quo  Vadis"  has 
imitated  as  best  he  could  Bulwer's  destruction  of  Pompeii; 
but  his  description  is  a  mere  daub,  a  multi-headed  night- 
mare. There  is  nothing  majestic,  nothing  awe-inspiring 
about  it,  albeit  the  artist  sweats  blood  to  make  it  awful.  It 
reads  like  an  amateur  reporter's  "spread"  of  the  Chicago 
fire.  His  description  of  the  martyrdom  of  the  Christians 
resembles  an  anatomical  lecture,  in  a  dissecting  room.  It  is 
a  revolting  picture  upon  which  the  artist  lovingly  dwells 
through  long  pages,  until  the  heart  faints  and  the  soul 
sickens  with  the  saturnalia  of  blood,  the  interminable  best- 
iality. It  reads  like  a  newspaper  account  of  a  prize  fight 
"by  rounds."  A  true  prtist  would  have  completed  the  pic- 
ture with  a  few  bold  strokes  of  the  pencil,  well  knowing  that 
familiarity  even  with  crime  breeds  contempt.  The  Chris- 
tians of  "Quo  Vadis"  are  not  men  and  women  of  mental 
equipoise  devoted  in  a  sane  manner  to  the  services  of  the 
Master,  but  wild-eyed  fanatics  who  court  destruction,  be- 
lieving that  the  more  terrible  their  torture  the  brighter  their 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  461 

crown.  They  want  to  be  crucified  because  Christ  suffered 
that  death,  and  they  are  disappointed  to  learn  that  they  are 
to  be  eaten  by  dogs  or  torn  by  lions,  that  method  of  destruc- 
tion not  affording  them  sufficient  opportunity  for  suffering. 
Doubtless  there  were  in  the  days  of  Nero  crazy  Christians 
who  courted  the  cross,  but  we  may  safely  assume  that  a  vast 
majority  of  the  converts  of  Peter  and  Paul  were  sane.  The 
labored  depiction  of  wholesale  insanity,  commingled  with 
scenes  of  blood,  lechery,  profligacy  and  tyranny,  are  scarce 
calculated  to  make  people  better,  hence  "Quo  Vadis"  is  not 
a  good  book.  It  is  a  dismal  failure  from  a  religious,  his- 
torical and  artistic  standpoint,  but  it  sells  because  a  lot  of 
irresponsible  damphools  have  made  it  a  fad.  Its  author 
should  be  condemned  to  the  treadmill  for  having  spewed 
forth  such  an  unsavory  conglomeration  of  ignorance  and  in- 
eptitude to  debauch  the  minds  of  the  people.  "Ben  Hur" 
is  the  only  religious  novel  I  know  of  that  is  really  worth 
the  reading — and  it  could  be  improved  by  considerable 
pruning. 


WILLY  WALLY  TO  WED. 

Wm.  Waldorf  Astor  is  a  consistent  Anglo-maniac.  In- 
stead of  remaining  in  this  blawsted  bloomin'  country,  upon 
which  he  looks  with  the  disdain  of  a  well  groomed  ass  con- 
templating the  Iliad,  he  hied  him  to  "perfidious  Albion" 
and  took  up  his  abode  in  its  foggy  metropolis,  surrounded 
by  m'luds,  whom  he  so  much  admires.  It  could  scarce  be 
expected  that  a  country  so  new  and  crass  as  America  would 
harmonize  with  the  triple  plated  culchaw  and  super-aes- 
theticism  of  a  man  who  traces  his  proud  patrician  lineage 
and  abundant  lucre  back  to  Johann  Jakob  Astor,  the  wood- 
en-show purveyor  of  green  coon-skins  and  odoriferous  pole- 
cat pelts,  Jamaica  bug- juice  and  brummagem  jewelry.  With 
a  cash  capital  of  one  jug  of  cheap  rum  and  a  shirt-tail  full 
of  glass  beads,  the  thrifty  Johann  Jakob  went  among  the 
Indians  and  founded  a  fortune  which  enabled  him  to  buy 
a  large  slice  of  Manhattan  Island  when  it  was  selling  at 
four  cents  per  acre.  By  feeding  himself  but  once  a  day, 
and  then  with  a  piece  of  fat  pork  anchored  to  a  cotton  cord, 
half-soling  his  own  pants  with  sea-weed  and  going  bare- 
foot in  summer  to  save  his  shoes,  he  was  able  to  hang  to 
his  land  until  the  industry  and  enterprise  of  others  made  it 
worth  almost  a  dollar  an  acre,  when  he  passed  it  on  to  his 


462  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST 

posterity  simply  because  it  wasn't  portable.  The  unearned 
increment  accumulated  from  generation  to  generation  in  a 
ratio  of  geometrical  progression,  until  his  spawn  became 
as  rich  as  grease  and  slung  on  more  unadulterated  agony 
#han  a  Washington  nigger  with  ,a  brass  watch.  Willy 
Wally  was  the  flower  and  fruitage  of  the  Astor  family. 
American  vulgarisms  grated  upon  his  sensitive  soul  like  a 
rat-tail  file  drawn  across  a  sore  tooth,  and  he  arose  and 
fled  from  us  as  a  Della-Cruscan  poetess  might  chase  her 
shrinking  soul  from  a  country  hog-killing  or  the  pervasive 
odor  of  ebullient  soft-soap.  Would  to  heaven  that  all  the 
half-baked  American  slobs  who  worship  at  the  shrine  of 
European  flunkeyism,  and  who  say  "eyther"  and  "neyther," 
would  follow  in  his  footsteps.  The  brainless  inanities  will 
breed,  and  we  should  encourage  them  to  drop  their  worth- 
less calves  in  a  foreign  country.  Willy  Wally  has  just  had 
the  "distinguished  honor"  of  entertaining  Ts  Royal  'Igh- 
ness,  the  Prince  of  Wales.  His  Nibs  has  become  so  well 
known  as  a  crooked  gambler  that  he  can  no  longer  steer 
the  toothsome  sucker  against  his  sure-thing  games,  and  is 
devoting  his  talents  to  the  profitable  industry  of  pulling  the 
legs  of  wealthy  plebs  in  search  of  social  distinction.  He  is 
always  in  need  of  cash,  and  even  the  title-loving  English 
people  have  tired  of  paying  debts  resulting  from  his  de- 
baucheries. It  is  well  understood  in  England  that  when  he 
honors  a  parvenu  with  his  royal  presence  that  a  fat  "loan" 
is  expected,  which  is  in  reality  his  fee  for  the  distinguished 
social  favor.  Willy  Wally  is  worth  $150,000,000,  hence  can 
well  afford  to  tip  this  social  huckster  who  trades  upon  his 
title.  Think  of  the  felicity  of  seeing  himself  proclaimed  in 
all  the  Anglo-maniacal  papers  of  his  native  land  as  the  host 
of  Imperial  Highness !  I  can  only  wonder  that  Wales 
waited  so  long  before  tapping  the  purse  of  the  Astorian 
plutocrat;  but  he  may  have  been  fighting  shy  in  order  to 
secure  a  better  price.  The  prince  is  heir  apparent  to  nothing 
but  an  empty  title  and  the  privilege  of  being  supported  by 
the  toil  of  better  people.  The  sovereign  of  Great  Britain  is 
a  veritable  Toom-ta-bard,  a  mere  figurehead,  of  about  as 
little  real  importance  in  the  governmental  plan  as  a  sack  of 
sawdust.  When  the  Prince  succeeds  his  mother  he  will  be  as 
powerless  so  far  as  matters  of  great  moment  are  concerned, 
as  he  is  at  present.  He  can  hock  the  throne,  give  the  crown 
jewels  to  harlots  and  divide  his  time  between  baccarat  and 
bawdry  without  throwing  one  cog  in  the  governmental 
machinery  out  of  gear.  He  is  simply  a  beery  old  bum  who 
has  spent  his  life  cheating  at  the  gaming  board,  debauching 


BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST  463 

the  fool  wives  of  those  who  hang  upon  his  favors  and  dop- 
ing for  the  foulest  of  all  diseases.  If  he  pays  a  woman  any 
attention  her  reputation  is  forever  ruined.  His  leery  smile 
would  wither  the  good  name  of  a  vestal  virgin.  Mary  An- 
derson, "Our  Mary,"  understood  this  and  cut  him  cold — 
snubbed  him  as  she  might  an  impudent  coon  in  her  native 
Kentucky.  He  is  the  avatar  of  immorality,  the  beau-ideal  of 
dead  beats,  a  social  leper  who  should  be  compelled  to  herd  by 
himself  and  continually  cry,  "Unclen !  unclean !"  He  has 
the  heart  of  a  hyena  and  the  instincts  of  an  ape, — proving 
him  a  true  scion  of  the  House  of  Hanover.  He  has  done 
absolutely  nothing  for  his  country  but  disgrace  it.  As  if  to 
add  insult  unto  injury,  to  pile  Pelion  upon  Ossa,  he  has 
brought  forth  a  brood  of  brainless  brats  to  fatten  on  the 
public  and  perpetuate  their  father's  foulness.  No  self- 
respecting  English  gentleman  would  permit  him  to  enter 
his  mule  pasture  or  associate  with  his  sows  were  he  not 
"stuck  o'er  with  titles  and  hung  round  with  strings."  When 
he  visits  even  a  peer  of  the  realm  he  insists  upon  naming 
the  "ladies"  who  are  to  be  invited  to  meet  him,  and  turns 
the  mansion  of  his  host  into  a  harem.  That  is  the  feculent 
cur  who  has  honored  the  great  grandson  of  the  old  Man- 
hattan hide  merchant  with  his  imperial  presence.  They 
were  well  met,  if  the  rumor  be  true  that  Willy  Wally  is  to 
wed  the  widow  of  the  late  Lord  Randolph  Churchill,  "after 
the  prescribed  term  of  mourning" — for  the  husband  she 
drove  to  his  death  a  year  ago  with  her  debaucheries !  It  will 
be  remembered  that  it  was  the  eldest  son  of  the  Prince  of 
Wales  who  was  caught  in  a  compromising  attitude  with 
Lady  Churchill  at  Windsor  Castle.  And  Mr.  Astor  is 
proud  to  entertain  in  the  house  to  which  he  will  bring  his 
soiled  bride  the  sire  of  the  syphilitic  little  simian  who  de- 
bauched her!  Yet  this  man  was  once  an  American!  Let 
us  thank  the  dear  Lord  that  he  is  such  no  longer, — that  his 
infamy  is  altogether  English.  May  he  ever  remain  abroad 
to  play  Pandarus  to  this  bogus  Prince ;  to  keep  a  cistern — 
as  Othello  would  say — for  foul  toads  to  knot  and  gender  in. 
Widow  Churchill  has  indeed  improved  her  time.  Before 
her  dishonored  husband  hath  rotted  in  his  grave;  before 
"the  prescribed  term  of  mourning"  has  ended ; 

"Ere  yet  the  salt  of  most  unrighteous  tears 
Had  left  the  flushing  in  her  galled  eyes," 

she  was  spooning  and  yum-yuming,  actually  engaged  to  be 
married  to  another  man,  impatiently  awaiting  the  end  of 
her  "mourning"  period — a  tear  in  one  eye  and  a  wink  in 


464  BRANN,  THE  ICONOCLAST. 

the  other  I  When  wedded  to  the  concubine  of  Clarence, 
Willy  Wally  can  go  with  her  to  lay  garlands  on  the  grave 
of  Lord  Randolph,  and  there  reflect  that  not  even  a  de- 
scendant of  old  John  Churchill  and  Sarah  Jennings — who 
prostituted  a  sister  to  fill  their  purse — could  abide  the  foul- 
ness of  this  bawd.  Being  something  of  a  dilettante  in  litera- 
ture, he  might  collaborate  with  Alfred  Austin,  the  rhymster 
for  royalty,  in  a  eulogy  of  the  titled  dude  whose  enterprise 
made  Lady  Churchill  a  widow  that  the  facile  princeps  of 
Anglo-maniacs  might  win  a  wife.  He  owes  a  debt  of  grati- 
tude to  the  eldest  son  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  for  thus  hav- 
ing paved  his  way  to  a  nuptial  Paradise.  He  should  burn 
incense  daily  at  the  sarcophagus  of  the  son,  and  recom- 
mend his  lively  kins-woman,  Mrs.  J.  Coleman-Drayton,  to 
the  attention  of  the  sire, 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
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RECALL 


Jl'D  LIB  :ARY 
3UE  MAY  1 S  1971 

MAY  1  2  REC'D 


LIBRARY,  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  DAVIS 

Book  Slip-50m-8,'63(D9954s4)458 


r 

f 

^10^73 

Call  Number: 

PS1121 
B53 

1911 
i  

Brann,  W.C. 
Brann  the  iconoclast* 

"Brann 


319673 


I9D 
/•I 


